PAMPHLETS AND SKETCHES. 



Pamphlets 



AND 



Sketches 



/ 



: 



BY 



THE RIGHT HON. LORD LYTTON 




LONDON 

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS 

THE BROADWAY, LIT) GATE 

NEW YOEK : 416 BROOME STREET 
1S75 






LONDON 

BRADBURY, AGXFW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 



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PBEFATOKY NOTE TO THE KNEBWOETH 
EDITION. 



The half-dozen pieces comprised in this volume are 
given for the most part in the chronological order in which 
they originally appeared. 

The Letter upon the Political Crisis of 1834 had an 
extraordinary success at the time of its first publication, 
enjoying, besides this, the repute of having considerably 
influenced the General Election, which immediately after- 
wards led to a change of government. 

How it was that the " Confessions of a Water-Patient " 
came to be written at all may be here explained. 
Mr. Harrison Ainsworth having, in 1845, purchased the 
New Monthly Magazine, applied to Sir Edward Lytton, 
with whom he had long been on terms of intimacy, and 
who had himself been a former editor of that periodical, 
to aid his new enterprise with a contribution. In com- 
pliance with this request, these Experiences of the Water 
Cure were jotted down in the form of a letter addressed 
to Mr. Ainsworth, as editor of the New Monthly. Grateful 
for so welcome a contribution, the romancist of " Rook- 
wood" begged his brother author's acceptance of two 
antique suits of armour, which still adorn the banqueting- 
hall at Knebworth. 

As for the "Letters to John Bull," which appeared from 
the press in 1851, they were the vindication of the writer's 
views as an agriculturist and a politician, or, as he ex- 
pressed it by his signature, as a landlord and a labourer 
— views consistently maintained by him during seventeen 
years consecutively. The publication of these Letters was 
chiefly important to himself, as preparing the way for 



VI PREFACE. 

his return to the House of Commons (after an absence 
from it of eleven years) in his capacity as the Conserva- 
tive member for Hertfordshire. 

The " Life of Schiller " originally appeared as a prefix to 
the translations of the poems and ballads of the great 
German lyrist, when, in 1845, they were first collected 
together, after their piecemeal issue in the pages of 
BlackivoooV s Magazine. Similarly the essay illustrative of 
the " Causes of Horace's Popularity,' ' having first appeared 
as a contribution to Maga, was, in 1849, placed, by way of 
Introduction, before Lord Lytton's unrhymed but rythmi- 
cal version of the Odes and Epodes published by the 
Messrs. Blackwood. 

The concluding pages in this volume, now first identified 
as from the hand of " Bulwer," appeared anonymously 
nearly forty years ago, that is, in 1838, in the first volume 
of the Monthly Chronicle. As an elaborate disquisition 
upon the Art of Fiction, penned in mid-career by one of 
the great masters of that art, it will, doubtless, be turned 
to with something of the same interest with which the 
reader might turn to a treatise of Paganini on the 
structure of a Straduarius, or to one by Sebastian Bach 
■upon the subtleties of counterpoint. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Present Ceisis 9 

Confessions of a Water-Patient 49 

Letters to John Bull, Esq .76 

Life and Writings of Paul Lotjis Courier . . . 175 

The Life of Schiller 195 

The Causes of Hoeace's Pofularity 291 

On Art in Fiction ........ 318 



PAMPHLETS AND SKETCHES. 



THE PEESENT CRISIS. 



A LETTER TO A LATE CABINET MINISTER.* 

"But, my Lords, how is the King's Government to be carried on? " — The 
Duke of Wellington on the Reform Bill. 

" The general appearance of submission .... encouraged the King 
to remove from office the Marquis of Halifax, with whose liberal opinions 
he had recently, as well as early, been dissatisfied. As the King found that 
Halifax would not comply with his projects, he determined to dismiss him 
before the meeting of Parliament." — Mackintosh' s History of the Revolu- 
tion, chap, ii. 

My LoPvD, — The Duke of Wellington has obtained many 
victories, but he never yet has obtained a victory over the 
English People ! — That battle has now to be adventured ; 
it has been tried before, but in vain. On far worse ground 
the great Captain hazards it again ; for his first battle was 
to prevent giving power to the people ; the power obtained, 
his second is to resist it. It is the usual fate of fortunate 
warriors, that their old age is the sepulchre of their renown. 
No man has read the history of England without compas- 
sion for the hero of Anne's time. Marlborough in his glory, 
and Marlborough in his dotage ; what a satire in the con- 
trast ! With a genius for war, it may be, equal ; with a 
genius in peace, incontestably inferior ; with talents far less 
various ; with a knowledge of his times far less profound ; 
with his cunning and his boldness, without his eloquence 
and his skill, the Duke of Wellington has equalled the 
glory of Marlborough, — is he about to surpass his dotage ? 

* [Origina'ly published in 1834 as an 8vo pamphlet.] 



10 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

Marlborough was a trickster, but he sought only to trick a 
court ; has the Duke of Wellington a grander ambition, 
and would he trick a people ? " Like chimneys," said the 
wise man, " which are useful in winter and useless in sum- 
mer, soldiers are great in war, and valueless in peace." 
The chimney smokes again! — there is a shout from the 
philosophers who disagree with the wise man, " See how 
useful it is! " — but it smokes because it has kept the soot 
of the last century, and has just set the house in a blaze ! — 
the smoke of the chimney, in this instance, is only the first 
sign of the conflagration of the edifice. 

Let us, my Lord, examine the present state of affairs. 
Your Lordship is one of that portion of the late Ministry 
which has been considered most liberal. Acute, far-seeing, 
and accomplished, with abilities, which, exercised in a 
difficult position, have been singularly successful in the 
results they achieved, your Lordship is among those whose 
elevation to the Cabinet was hailed with a wider satisfac- 
tion than that of a party — and so short a time has elapsed 
between your accession and retirement, (expulsion would 
be the proper term,) that you are but little implicated in 
the faults or virtues of the administration, over whose 
grave I shall endeavour, in the course of this letter, to 
inscribe a just and impartial epitaph. I address to you, 
my Lord, these observations, as one interested alike in the 
preservation of order, and the establishment of a popular 
government — there may be a few who wish to purchase the 
one at the expense of the other ; you wish to unite them, 
and so do I. And we are both confident that such is yet 
the wish, — nay more — the assured hope, of the majority of 
the English people. 

The King has dissolved Lord Melbourne's Administra- 
tion, and the Duke of Wellington is at the head of affairs. 
Who will be his colleagues is a question that admits of no 
speculation. We are as certain of the list as if it were 
already in the Gazette. It is amusing to see the now 
ministerial journals giving out, that we are not on any 
account to suppose, that it must necessarily be a high Con- 
servative cabinet. God forbid so rash a conjecture ! " Who 
knows," say they, "but what many Whigs — many Liberals, 
will be a part of it ! We are only waiting for Sir Robert 
Peel, in order to show you, perhaps, that the Government 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 11 

will not be Tory ! " * So then, after all the Tory abuse 

of the Whigs — after all the assertions of their unpopularity, 
it is nevertheless convenient to insinuate that some of these 
most abominable men may yet chequer and relieve the too 
expectant and idolatrous adoration with which the people 
would be imbued for a Cabinet purely Conservative ! The 
several ambrosias of Wellington and Londonderry, of 
Herries and Peel, would be too strong for mortal tastes, if 
blended into one divine combination — so they might as well 
pop a Whig or two into the composition, just to make it fit 
for mankind ! The hypothesis may be convenient — but, 
unhappily, no one accepts it. Every man in the political 
world who sees an inch before his nose, is aware, that 
though his Grace may have an option with respect to 
measures, he has none with respect to men. He may filch 
away the Whig policy, but he cannot steal the Whigs them- 
selves without their consent. And the fact is notorious, 
that there is not a single man of liberal politics — a single 
man, who either belonged to the late government, or has 
supported popular measures, who will take office under the 
Duke of Wellington, charm he never so wisely. It is said, 
my Lord, by those who ought best to know, that even Lord 
Stanley, of whom, by the unthinking, a momentary doubt 
was entertained, scorns the very notion of a coalition with 
the Conservatives — a report I credit at once, because it is 
congenial to the unblemished integrity and haughty honour 
of the man. The Duke of Wellington, then, has no option 
as to the party he must co-invest with office — unless, in- 
deed, he strip himself of all power — abdicate the post of 
chef, and send up to his Majesty the very same bill of fare 
which has just been found so unpalatable to the royal 
tastes. This is not exactly probable. And we know, there- 
fore, even before Sir Robert Peel arrives, and whether Sir 
Robert Peel take office or whether he do not, — we know 
that his Grace's colleagues, or his Grace's nominees, can 
only be the dittos of himself — it is the Farce of Anti-Re- 
form once more, by Mr. Sarum and his family — it is the 
old company again, and with the old motto " Vivant Rex 
et Regina ! " Now-a-days, even in farces, the loyalty of 

* " It is possible his Grace may think that some of the "Whig leaders who 
are abroad, or absent from London, are likely to form useful components of 
a new administration." — Standard. 



12 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

the play-bill does not suffice to carry the public. Thank 
God ! for the honour of political virtue, it is, and can be, 
no compromise of opinions ! — no intermixture of Whigs 
and Tories ! — not a single name to which the heart of the 
people ever for a moment responded will be found to re- 
lieve the well-known list of downright, thorough, uncom- 
promising enemies to all which concedes abuse to the 
demands of opinion. Your Lordship remembers in Virgil 
how iEneas meets suddenly with the souls of those who 
were to return to the earth they had before visited, after 
drinking deep enough of oblivion : so now how eager — how 
noisy — how anxious wait the Conservative shadows, for the 
happy hour that is to unite them to the substance of place. 

— Strepit omnis murmure campus ! * 

how they must fret and chafe for the appointed time ! — 
but in the meanwhile have they drauk of the Lethe ? If 
they have, unhappily the world to which they return has 
not had a similar advantage ; they are escaped from their 
purgatory before the appointed time — for the date which 
Virgil, and we, gave them, in order completely to cleanse 
their past misdeeds, was — a thousand years ! In the mean- 
while there they stand ! mistaken, unequivocal ! — Happy 
rogues — behold them, in the elysium of their hopes, perched 
upon little red boxes, tied together by little red strings — 

" Iterumque in tarda reverti 

Corpora ; qua? hicis miseris tarn dira cupido ! " f 

Well may the Times and the Tories say they will be " an 
united Cabinet:" — united they always were in their own 
good days of the Liverpool ascendancy — united to take 
office at every risk — to seize all they can get — to give 
nothing that they can refuse ! — My God ! what delight 
among the subordinate scramblers to see before them once 
more the prospect of a quarter's salary ! — They have been 
out of service a long time — their pride is down — they are 
willing to be hired by the job ; — a job too of the nature of 
their old services ; for, without being a prophet, one may 
venture to predict that they will have little enough to do 

* [And all the plain buzzes with their humming noise.] 
f [And enter again into inactive bodies ; what direful loye of the light 
possesses the miserable beings !] 



THE PEESENT CRISIS. 13 

for their money ! When working- day commences with the 
next session of Parliament they will receive their wages 
and their discharge. They have gone into sinecures again ! 
honest fellows ! they are making quick use of the Poor 
Law bill — in which it is ordained that able-bodied paupers 
out of employ should be taken in doors for relief ! And 
yet I confess, there is something melancholy as well as 
ludicrous, in the avidity of these desperadoes. — The great 
Florentine historian informs us, with solemn indignation, 
(as something till then unheard of in the corruption of 
human nature,) that in the time of the plague there were 
certain men who rejoiced, for it was an excellent time for 
pillage ! — the people perished, but the brigands throve ! — 
And nothing, we might imagine at first, could exceed the 
baseness of those who sought to enrich themselves amidst 
the general affliction. But on consideration, we must deem 
those men still baser who do not find — but who create — 
the disorder ; — and who not only profit by the danger of 
the public — but in order to obtain the profit, produce the 
danger ! — For, my Lord, there are two propositions which 
I hold to be incontestable : — first, that the late resolution 
of the King, if sudden in effect, was the result of a pre- 
vious and secret understanding that the Tories would 
accept office ; and that his Majesty never came to the de- 
termination of dismissing my Lord Melbourne, until he 
had ascertained, mediately or immediately — (it matters not 
which, nor how long ago) — that the Duke of Wellington 
was not only prepared to advise the King as to his suc- 
cessor, but could actually pledge himself to form a Ministry. 

I grant that this is denied, though feebly, by the Conser- 
vative journals, but to what an alternative would belief in 
that denial reduce us ! Can we deem so meanly of the 
royal prudence, as to imagine that the King could dismiss 
one Government, without being assured that he could form 
another ? In what an awful situation would this empire 
be placed, could we attribute to his Majesty, with the 
Tory tellers of the tale, so utter a want of the commonest 
resources of discretion, — so reckless and improvident a 
lunacy ! 

But it may be granted, perhaps, that the King was aware 
that the Duke of Wellington ivould either undertake to 
form a Cabinet, or to advise his Majesty as to its forma- 



14 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

tion, whenever it should please the King to exercise his 
undoubted prerogative in the dismissal of Lord Melbourne, 
and yet be asserted that neither that understanding nor 
that dismissal was the result of intrigue. Doubtless! 
Who knows so little of a Court as to suppose that an in- 
trigue is ever carried on within its precincts ? Is not that 
the place, above all others, where the secret whisper, the 
tranquil hint, the words that never commit the speaker, 
the invisible writing and automaton talking of diplomacy, 
are never known ! It is never in a Court that an intrigue 
is formed ; and the reason is obvious — because they have 
always another name for it ! There was no intrigue then. 
Why should there be one ? The King might never have 
spoken to the Duke of Wellington on the subject — the 
Duke of Wellington might be perfectly unaware of what 
time or on what pretext Lord Melbourne would be dis- 
missed ; and yet the King might, and must, (for who can 
say a King has not common sense ?) have known that the 
Duke would accept office whenever Lord Melbourne was 
dismissed ; and the Duke have known, on his part, that the 
King was aware of that loyal determination. This is so 
plain a view of the case, that it requires no state explana- 
tions to convince us of it, or persuade us out of it. 

The Duke, then, and his colleagues were willing to 
accept office : on the knowledge of that willingness the 
King exercised his prerogative, and since we now see no 
other adviser of the Crown, it is his Grace alone whom we 
must consider responsible for the coming experiment, 
which is to back the House of Lords against the Repre- 
sentatives of the People. 

I hold it as a second and incontestable proposition, that 
in this experiment there is danger, were it only for Ireland 
— the struggle has begun — the people have not been the 
first to commence — they will be the last to leave it. It is 
a struggle between the Court and the People. My Lord, 
recollect that fearful passage, half tragedy, half burlesque, 
in the history of France 9 which we now see renewed in 
England — when Mirabeau rose up in the midst of an 
assembly suddenly dissolved, and the nation beheld the 
tiers etat on one side, and the Master of the Ceremo- 
nies on the other ! 

The Duke of Wellington is guiltless of the lore of history, 



THE PRESENT CRISIS, 15 

not so his colleagues. I will concede the whole question of 
danger in the struggle about to be — I will subscribe to the 
wisdom of the experiment — I will renounce liberty itself — 
if Sir Robert Peel, so accomplished in letters — if Sir 
George Murray, so erudite in history, will but tell us of a 
single instance in which the people, having firmly obtained 
the ascendant power, — having held that power for two 
years, have, at the end of that period, spontaneously re- 
signed it. The English people have the power now, in 
their elections — an election is at hand — there is no army to 
awe, no despot to subdue, no enemy to embarrass them — 
will they, of their own accord, give back that power to the 
very men from whom they have wrenched it ? The notion 
is so preposterous that we can scarcely imagine the design 
of the new Cabinet to rest with the experiment of a new 
Parliament : it would seem as if they meditated the alter- 
native of governing without a Parliament at all — as if they 
would hazard again the attempt of the Stuarts ; as if the 
victor of Waterloo were already looking less to the conduct 
of the electors than to the loyalty of the army. In fact, this 
is not so wholly extravagant an expectation as it may seem. 
The Tories fear the people — why should the people not fear 
the Tories ? They call us desirous of a revolution — why 
may we not think they would crush that revolution in the 
bud, by a despotism ? Nor, for politicians without prin- 
ciple, would the attempt be so ridiculous as our pride might 
suppose. It seems to me, if they are resolved to govern us, 
that the sword would be the best sceptre. A resolute army, 
well disciplined, and well officered, with the Duke of Wel- 
lington at the head, would be a far more formidable enemy 
to the people than half a score hack officials in the council, 
and a legion of smooth-faced Conservatives, haranguing, 
bribing, promising, — abusing known reformers, and pro- 
mising unknown reforms, to the " ten-pound philosophers'' 
from the hustings : the latter experiment is ridiculous, the 
former is more grave and statesmanlike. If a Londonderry 
would have advised his Majesty to call in the Duke of 
Wellington, a Machiavelli would have told him in doing so 
to calculate on the army. Folly in these days, as in all 
others, can only be supported and rendered venerable by 
force. 

As vet we are lost in astonishment at the late changes : 



16 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

we are not angry, we are too much, amused, and too con- 
fident of our own strength to be angiy. So groundless 
seems the change, that people imagine it only to be 
fathomed by the most recondite conjectures. They are 
lost in a wilderness of surmise, and yet, I fancy, that the 
mystery is not difficult to solve. 

Let us for a moment leave Lord Althorp out of the ques- 
tion ; we will come to him by-and-by. Let us consider the 
question of reforming the Irish Church. England has two 
prominent causes of trouble : the one is the state of Ire- 
land, the other is her House of Lords. Now it is notorious 
that we cannot govern Ireland without a very efficient and 
thorough reform in the mighty grievance of her church ; it 
is equally notorious that that reform the House of Lords 
would reject. We foresaw this — we all knew that in six 
months the collision between the two Houses would come 
— we all knew that the Lords would reject that reform, 
and we all felt assured that Lord Melbourne would tell the 
King that he was not fit to be a minister if he could not 
carry it. There is the collision ! in that collision which 
would have yielded? Not the House of Commons. All 
politicians, even the least prophetic, must have foreseen this 
probability, this certainty. His Majesty (let us use our 
common sense) must have foreseen it too. Doubtless, his 
Majesty foresaw also that this was not the sole question of 
dispute, which his present administration, and his present 
House of Commons would have been compelled by public 
opinion to raise with the Hereditary Chamber, and his 
Majesty therefore resolved to take the earliest decorous 
opportunity of preventing the collision, not by gaining the 
Lords, but by dismissing the Commons, and he now hopes, 
by the assistance of the leader of the House of Lords, to make 
the attempt to govern his faithful subjects, not by the 
voice of that chamber they have chosen for themselves, but 
by that very assembly who were formerly in the habit of 
choosing for them. It is an attempt to solve our most 
difficult problem, an attempt to bring the two Houses into 
harmony with each other ; but it is on an unexpected prin- 
ciple. — There is an anecdote of Sheridan, that walking 
home one night, not altogether so sober as he should be, bo 
was suddenly accosted by a gentleman in the gutter, con- 
siderably more drunk than himself. " For the love of Grod, 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 17 

help me up ! M cried the stranger. " My dear Sir," hic- 
cuped Sheridan, " that is out of the question. I cannot 
help you up ; but (let us compromise the matter) I will lie 
down by you ! " The House of Lords is in the gutter — the 
House of Commons on its legs — the matter is to be compro- 
mised — the House of Commons is not to help up the 
House of Lords, but to lie down by its side ! Fate takes 
from us the leader of the Liberals in one House; — to 
supply the place, his Majesty gives us the leader of the 
Tories in the other. Prophetic exchange ! We are not to 
make our Lords reformers, but our representatives cease to 
be so ! Such is the royal experiment to prevent a collision. 
It is a very ingenious one ; but his Majesty has forgotten 
that Gatton and Lost wit hiel are no more. In the next 
election this question is to be tried, "Are the people of 
England to be governed according to the opinion of the 
House of Lords, or according to the principles of their 
own reform ! " That is the point at issue. Twist, pervert, 
construe it as you will — raise whatever cries in favour of 
the Church on one hand, or in abuse of the Whigs on the 
other, the question for the electors is ; — will they, or will 
they not, choose a House of Commons that shall pass the 
same votes as the Lords, and that shall not pass votes 
which the Lords would reject ? After having abolished 
the Gattons, will they make their whole House a Gatton ? 

Supposing then the King, from such evident reasons, to 
have resolved to get rid of his Ministers, at the first oppor- 
tunity,* — suddenly Lord Spencer dies, and the opportunity 
is afforded. There might have been a better one. Through- 

* And the Standard (Nov. 20th), the now official organ (and certainly an 
abler or a more eloquent the ministers could not have), frankly allows that 
the King has long been dissatisfied with the government — and even suggests 
the causes of that displeasure. 

" Lord Grey's administration," it says, "was at first perfect — (indeed! 
that is the first time we have heard the concession from such a quarter) — or 
if altered, altered only for the better by its purification from the to-all- 
intolerable ! Earl of Durham." But this halcyon state soon ceases, because 
liberal measures creep in, and chief among the causes of the King's dislike 
to his ministers, and therefore to the Commons, is, first, the Irish Church 
Bill, which the reader will remember was rejected by the House of Lords — 
the bill, not the rejection of it, is mightily displeasing to the King; and 
secondly, that change in the Irish Coercion Bill which allowed his Majesty's 
Irish subjects a Jury instead of a Court-Martial. This is termed by the 
Standard — u the Coercion Bill mangled into a mere mockery." — We* may 
see what sort of mangling we are likely to have, 

C 



18 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

out the whole history of England, since the principles of a 
constitutional government, and of a responsible adminis- 
tration, were established, in 1688, there is no parallel to 
the combination of circumstances attendant upon the pre- 
sent change. A parallel to a part of the case there may 
be, to the whole case there is none. The Cabinet assure 
the King of their power and willingness to carry on the 
government : the House of Commons, but recently elected, 
supports that Cabinet by the most decided majorities ; the 
Premier, not forced on the King by a party, but solicited 
by himself to accept office ; a time of profound repose ; no 
resignation tendered, no defeat incurred — the revenue in- 
creasing — quiet at home — peace abroad ; the political at- 
mosphere perfectly serene : — when lo, there dies a very old 
man, whose death every one has been long foreseeing — not 
a minister, but the father of a minister, which removes, not 
the Premier, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer, from the 
House of Commons to the House of Lords ! An event so 
long anticipated, does not confound the Cabinet. The 
premier is not aghast, he cannot be taken by surprise by 
an event so natural, and so anticipated, (for very old men 
will die !) he is provided with names to fill up the vacant 
posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the 
House of Commons. He both feels and declares himself 
equally strong as ever ; he submits his new appointments 
to his Majesty. Let me imagine the reply. The King, we 
are informed, by the now ministerial organs, expresses the 
utmost satisfaction at Lord Melbourne and his Govern- 
ment ; he considers him the most honourable of men, and 
among the wisest of statesmen. Addressing him, then, 
after this fashion — 

" He does not affect to dissemble his love, 
And therefore lie kicks him down stairs." 

" My Lord : — you are an excellent man, very — but old 
Lord Spencer — he was a man seventy-six years old ; no 
one could suppose that at that age, an Earl would die ! 
You are an admirable minister, I am pleased with your 
measures; but old Lord Spencer is no more. It is a 
sudden, an unforeseen event. Who could imagine he 
would only live to seventy- six ? The revenue is prospering, 
the Cabinet is strong — our allies are faithful, you have the 



THE PRESENT CMSIS. 19 

House of Commons at your back , but alas ! Lord Spencer 
is dead ! You cannot doubt my attachment to Eeform, but 
of course it depended on the life of Lord Spencer ? You 
have lost a Chancellor of the Exchequer ; you say, you can 
supply his place ; — but who can supply the place of the 
late Lord Spencer ? You have lost a leader of the House 
of Commons ; you have found another on whom you can 
depend ; but, my Lord, where shall we find another Earl 
Spencer, so aged, and so important as the Earl who is 
gone ! The life of the government, you are perfectly 
aware, was an annuity on the life of this unfortunate 
nobleman — he was only seventy-six! my love of liberal 
men, and liberal measures, is exceeding, and it was bound 
by the strongest tie, — the life of the late Lord Spencer. 
How can my people want Reform, now Lord Spencer is 
dead ? How can I support reforming ministers, when 
Lord Spencer has ceased to be ? The Duke of Wellington, 
you must be perfectly aware, is the only man to govern the 
country, which has just lost the owner of so fine a library, 
and so large an estate. It is true, that his Grace could not 
govern it before, but then Lord Spencer was in the way ! 
The untimely decease of that nobleman has altered the 
whole face of affairs. The people were not quite contented 
with the Whigs, because they did not go far enough ; but 
then — Lord Spencer was alive ! The people now will be 
satisfied with the Tories, because they do not go so far, for 
— Lord Spencer is dead ! A Tory ministry is necessary, it 
cannot get on without a Tory parliament ; and a Tory par- 
liament cannot be chosen without a Tory people. But, 
ministry, parliament, and people, what can they be but Tory, 
after so awful a dispensation of Providence as the death of 
the Earl of Spencer? My Lord, excuse my tears, and do me 
the favour to take this letter to the Duke of Wellington." 

Well, but it may be said, that it was not the death of 
this good old man, that so affected the King's arrange- 
ments ; it was the removal of Lord Althorp from the Com- 
mons. ;; What, is not that cause enough ? r ' cry the Tories. 
About as much cause as the one just assigned. "What, 
did not Lord Melbourne himself say, at the retirement of 
Lord Grey, that the return of Lord Althorp was indispen- 
sably necessary to his taking office?" Yery possibly. 
But there is this Little difference between the two cases ; in 

c 2 



20 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

the one, Lord Melbourne said, he could not carry on the 
government without Lord Althorp as leader of the Commons ; 
and in the other, he assured the King, that he could. The 
circumstances at the time which broke up Lord Grey's 
government, were such as raised the usual importance of 
Lord Althorp to a degree which every one saw must sub- 
side with the circumstances themselves. In the first place, 
it was understood, that Lord Althorp left the government, 
rather than pass an unpopular clause in the Coercion Bill, 
the passing of which certain circumstances rendered doubly 
distasteful to his mind ; that this led to the resignation of 
Earl Grey, and that Lord Althorp felt a natural and gene- 
rous scruple in resuming office after that resignation. The 
Members of the House of Commons came to their memo- 
rable requisition, because they looked upon Lord Althorp's 
resignation, as the consequence of his popular sentiments. 
They feared the vacancy he created could be filled only by 
a man of less liberal opinions, and they felt his return, in 
such circumstances, would be for the popular triumph, as 
his secession might be but a signal for a change of policy. 
Such were the circumstances under which Lord Melbourne, 
at that time, considered Lord Althorp's return to the leader- 
ship of the Commons as necessary to the stability of the 
government. But what circumstances in the late changes 
are analogous to these ? Is Lord Althorp now removed 
from office by popular sentiments, which rendered his 
return necessary for the triumph of his sentiments — not the 
use of his talents ? Is the Cabinet broken up ? Is the 
House of Commons declaring, that not even death shall 
tear it from its beloved leader ? What absurdity, to follow 
out the parallel ! Lord Althorp was called by the death of 
his venerable father to the House of Lords. His loss 
created no alarm for an alteration in our policy, broke up 
no cabinet, and disturbed no measures ; the prime minister 
was perfectly resigned to the event, and perfectly prepared 
with his succesor — a successor of the same principles, and 
if of less conciliatory manners, of equal experience, more 
comprehensive knowledge, and greater eloquence. * The 
King has a right to exercise his prerogative — no one dis- 

* In the best informed political circles it is understood that Lord John 
Kussell would have led the House of Commons and had the conduct of the 
Irish Church Bill. Mr. Abercromby would have taken charge of the Muni- 



o 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 21 

putes it. It is only a misfortune that other ministers have 
not also fathers of seventy-six ! Old Sir Robert, good Lord 
Mornington — would that they were alive ! 

And having now to all plain men shown how utterly 
burlesque is the whole pretext of the dismissal, and the 
whole parallel between Lord Althorp's former retirement 
and present elevation, let us turn again from the reason of 
the change to the change itself. 

There are some persons simple enough to imagine that 
though the Tory government may imply Tory men it does 
not imply Tory measures ; that the Duke of Wellington, 
having changed his sentiments (no, not his sentiments, — 
his actions) — on the Catholic question, will change them 
again upon matters like — the reform of the Protestant 
Church, the abuses of corporations, perhaps even triennial 
parliaments, and the purgation of the pension list ! There 
are men, calling themselves reformers, and blaming the 
Whigs as too moderate in reforms, not only vain enough 
to hope this, but candid enough to say that a government 
thus changing — no matter with what open and shameless 
profligacy — no matter with what insatiate lust of power, 
purchased by what unparalleled apostacy — that a govern- 
ment, thus changing, and therefore thus unprincipled, 
ought to receive the support of the people ! They would 
give their suffrage to the Duke of Wellington upon the 
very plea, that he will desert his opinions ; and declare 
that they will support him as a minister, if they can but be 
permitted to loathe him as an apostate. 

My Lord, I think differently on this point. Even were I 
able to persuade myself that the new Tory government 
would rival or outbid the Whigs in popular measures, I . 
would not support it. I might vote for their measures, 
but I would still attempt to remove the men. What ! is 
there nothing at which an honest and a generous people 
should revolt, in the spectacle of ministers suddenly turned 
traitors by the bribe of office — in the juggling by which 
men, opposing all measures of reform when out of place, 
will, the very next month, carry those measures if place 
depends upon it ? Would there be no evil in this to the 
morality of the people ? Would there be no poison in this 

cipal Reform. Names that on these questions in particular would have 
shown that the government were in earnest in their measures. 



22 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

to the stream of public opinion ? Would it be no national 
misfortune — no shock to order itself, (so much of which 
depends on confidence in its administrators,) to witness 
what sickening tergiversation, what indelible infamy, the 
vilest motives of place and power could inflict on the cha- 
racters of public men ? And to see the still more lament- 
able spectacle of a Parliament and a Press vindicating the 
infamy, and applauding the tergiversator ! Vain, for these 
new-light converts, would be the cant excuses of ' practical 
statesmen attending to the spirit of the age • — ' conforming 
to the wants of the time ' — ' yielding their theories to the 
power of the people ;' for these are the very excuses of which 
they have denied the validity ! If this argument be good 
for them in office, why did they deny, and scorn, and 
trample upon it out of office ? far more strong and cogent 
was it when they had only to withdraw opposition to mea- 
sures their theories disapproved, than when they themselves 
are spontaneously to frame those measures, administer them, 
and carry thern through. There could be but one interpre- 
tation to their change — one argument in their defence, and 
that is, — that they would not yield to reforms when nothing 
was to be got by it ; but that they would enforce reforms 
when they were paid for it — that they would not part with the 
birthright without the pottage, nor play the Judas without 
the fee ! I do not think so meanly of the high heart of 
England as to suppose that it would approve, even of good 
measures, from motives so shamelessly corrupt. And, for 
my own part, solemnly as I consider a thorough redress of 
her " monster grievance " necessary for the peace of Ireland, 
a reform of our own Church, and our own Corporations, 
and a thorough carrying out and consummation of the 
principles of our reform, desirable for the security and 
prosperity of England, I should consider these blessings 
purchased at too extravagant a rate, if the price were the 
degradation of public men — and the undying contempt for 
consistency, faith, and honour — for all that makes power 
sacred, and dignity of moral weight — which such an 
apostacy would evince. Never was liberty permanently 
served by the sacrifice of honesty. 

But this supposition, though industriously put forward 
by some politicians, unacquainted with what is best in our 
English nature, is, I think, utterly groundless. I do not 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 23 

attribute to the Duke of Wellington himself too rigid a 
political honesty. He, who after having stigmatized one 
day the Reform Bill, could undertake to carry it the next, 
may be supposed to have a mind, which, however locked 
and barred, the keys of state can open to conviction. But, 
let it be remembered, that his Grace stood then almost 
alone. All that was high and virtuous of his party refused 
to assist in his astonishing enterprise. From Sir Robert 
Peel to Sir Robert Inglis — from the moderate to the ultra- 
Tory — every man who had tasted the sweets of character, 
recoiled from so gross a contamination. His three days' 
government fell at once. Now he is wiser — doubtless he 
has formed a government — doubtless, he has contrived to 
embrace in it the men who refused before. I believe, for 
the honour of my countrymen, that they have not receded 
from their principles now, any more than they receded 
then. And those principles are anti-reforming. 

This is, then, their dilemma : either they will prosecute 
reform, or they will withhold it — either they will adhere 
to their former votes, or they will reverse them : in the 
one case, then, people of England, you will have uncom- 
promising anti-reformers at your head, — in the other, you 
will have ambitious and grasping traitors. Let them ex- 
tricate themselves from this dilemma if they can ! 

But, in fact, they have not this option. They are com- 
mitted in every way to their old principles ; they are com- 
mitted, first, to their own party, and secondly, to the King. 
Were they as liberal as the Whigs, their friends would 
desert them, perhaps his Majesty would dismiss them. 
Their friends are the High Church party. High Church 
is the war cry they raise — High Church the motto of their 
banner. What is the High Church party ? It is the 
party that is sworn to the abuses of the Church. Its 
members are pledged body and soul to the Bishops, and 
the Deans, and the Prebends, and the Universities, and 
the Orangemen of Ireland. They may give out that they 
think a great Church Reform is necessary ; vague ex- 
pression ! what is great to their eyes would be invisible to 
ours. Will they — let us come to the point, and I will 
single out one instance — will they curtail the Protestant 
Establishment of Catholic Ireland ? They have called the 
attempt " spoliation ; " will they turn "spoliators?" — If 



24 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

so, they lose their friends, for no man supposes that the 
Tory churchmen have a chemical affinity to the Duke of 
Wellington — they have no affinity but that of interest : if 
he offend their interests, he offends the party. Let him 
but say, " that church has no congregation, but it gives 
1500?. a year to the parson ; I respect property — the 
property of the people — and they shall cease to pay, after 
the death of the incumbent, for receiving no benefit ; " and 
all the parsons of the country are in arms again st him ! What 
a moment to suppose that he could do justice in such a case, 
— with the cheers of the Orangemen, and the ravings of Lon- 
donderry, and Roden, and Wicklow ringing in his ears ! * 

As for the claims of the Dissenters, who can imagine 
they will be attended to by the man who has called them 
atheists ? He may swallow his words, but can he swallow 
his friends of the colleges ? He cannot lose his great per- 
manent support, the Church, for a temporary and hollow 
support which would forsake him the moment he had 
served its purpose. 

The Corporations — what hope of reform there ? Every 
politician knows the Corporations are the strongholds of 
Toryism, and many of the truest liberals supported the 
government till the Corporation reform should be passed, 
in order to see, safely carried a measure against Toryism, 
only less important than the Reform Bill. To reform the 
Corporations will be to betray his own fortresses. Is the 
Duke of Wellington the man to do this ? 

But it is not to isolated measures that we are to look — the 
contest is not for this reform or the other — the two parties 
stand forth clear and distinct — they are no parties of names, 
but parties of opposite and irreconcilable interests. With 
the Duke of Wellington are incorporated those who have 
an interest in what belongs to an aristocratic, in opposition 
to a popular goverment, and he can concede nothing, or as 
little as possible, calculated to weaken the interests of his 
partizans. He is the incarnation of the House of Lords 
in opposition to the voice of the House of Commons. 

* See too the extracts from the Duke's speeches appended to this letter. 
And while I am correcting th^se sheets (Friday, Nov. 21), in the Report of 
the Conservative Dinner in Kent, it is pleasing to find that the supporters 
of the Duke of Wellington are of opinion that the cause of the great 
sinecure of Ireland, is the cause of all England ! Very true — but one 
is the plaintiff in the cause, the other the defendant ! 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 25 

Were lie then a Reformer, the people would despise him, 
his friends would desert,* and we may add, the possibility 
that the King would dismiss him. 

His Majesty, we are assured, has no personal dislike to 
the late premier : he lauds him as the most honourable of 
men — he blows up his government, and scatters chaplets 
over the ruin. It was not a dislike to his person, but to 
his principles that ensured his dismissal. Perhaps, had 
that accomplished and able minister condescended ' to 
palter in a double sense ' — to equivocate and dissemble, to 
explain his means, but to disguise his objects, he might 
still be in office. But it is known in the political world 
that he was an honest statesman — that whatever was his 
last conference with the King, he did not disguise informer 
interviews that reform must be an act as well as name — 
that a government to be strong must be strong in public 
gratitude and confidence — and perhaps, with respect to the 
particular reform of the Irish church, he may have deli- 
cately remarked, that the late Commission sanctioned by 
the King was not to amuse but to satisfy the people — that 
if its Report furnished a list of sinecure livings, there 
would be no satisfaction in wondering at the number — that 
to ascertain the manner and amount of abuses is only the 
prelude to their redress. This is reported of Lord Mel- 
bourne. I believe it, though not a syllable about any 
reform might have been introduced at the exact period of his 
removal. These, then, were the sentiments that displeased 
his Majesty, and to these sentiments he preferred the Duke 
of Wellington. He chose these new ministers because they 
would do less than his late ones. He can only give them 
his countenance so long as they fulfil his expectations. 

I pass over as altogether frivolous and absurd the tittle- 
tattle of the day. The King might or not be displeased 
at the speeches of Lord Brougham, — true, they might 
have offended the royal taste, but scarcely the royal poli- 
tics — Heaven knows they were sufficiently conservative and 
sufficiently loyal ; — they were much of the same character 
as those his Majesty might hear whispered, not declaimed, 
from his next chancellor at his own table. Such as they 

* But he might suppose that the measure which lost a Tory would gain 
a liberal. Yes, for that measure only. The friend would be lost for ever, 
the enemy gained but for a night. 



26 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

were, they had nothing to do with his Majesty's resolve 
— if they had, he would have sent, not for the Duke of 
Wellington, but the Earl of Durham ! I pass over with 
equal indifference the gossip that attacks the family of his 
Majesty. I know enough of courts to be sensible that we, 
who do not belong to them, are rarely well informed as 
to the influences which prevail in that charmed orbit ; and 
I am sufficiently embued with the chivalry of an honest 
man not to charge women with errors of which they are 
probably innocent, and of the consequences of which they 
are almost invariably unaware. I can even conceive that 
were it true that his Majesty's royal consort, or the female 
part of his family, were able to exercise an influence over 
state affairs, they would be actuated by the most affec- 
tionate regard for his interests and his dignity. The 
views of women are necessarily confined to a narrow circle : 
their public opinion is not that of a wide and remote 
multitude. They are attracted, even in humble stations, 
by the " solemn plausibilities " of life — they feel an anxious 
interest for those connected with them, which often renders 
their judgment too morbidly jealous of the smallest ap- 
parent diminution of their splendour or their power. To 
imagine that the more firmly a monarch adheres to his 
prerogatives the more he secures his throne, is a mistake 
natural to their sex. If such of them as may be supposed 
to advise his Majesty did form and did act on such a belief, 
to my mind it would be a natural and even an excusable 
error. Neither while I lament the resolution of the King, 
am I blind to the circumstances of his situation. Called 
to the throne in times of singular difficulty — the advisers 
of his predecessor, whose reign had been peaceful and 
brilliant, on one side — a people dissatisfied with half 
reforms on the other — educated to consider the House of 
Lords at least as worthy of deference as the popular will 
— disappointed at finding that one concession, however 
great, could not content a people who demanded it, but as 
the means to an end — turning to the most powerful organ 
of the Press, and reading that his liberal Ministers were 
unpopular, and that the country cared not who composed 
its government — seeing before him but two parties, besides 
the government party — the one headed by the idol of that 
people he began to fear, and the other by the most illus- 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 27 

trious supporter of an order of things which in past times 
was the most favourable to monarchy; — I cannot deem it 
altogether as mnch a miracle as a misfortune that he 
should be induced to make the experiment he has risked. 
But I do feel indignation at those — not women, but men — 
grey-haired and practical politicians, who must have been 
aware, if nob of its utter futility, of its pregnant danger ; 
by whose assistance the King now adventures no holiday 
experiment. — For a poor vengeance or a worse ambition 
they are hazarding the monarchy itself; by playing the 
Knave they expose the King. " There are some men," 
says Bacon, " who are such great self-lovers, that they will 
burn down their neighbour's house to roast their own 
eggs in the embers." In the present instance their neigh- 
bour's house may be a palace ! For this is the danger — 
not (if the people be true to themselves) that the Duke of 
Wellington will crush liberty, but that the distrust of the 
Royal wisdom in the late events — the feeling of insecurity 
it produces — the abrupt exercise of one man's prerogative 
to change the whole face of our policy, domestic, foreign, 
and colonial, without any assigned reason greater than the 
demise of old Lord Spencer — the indignation for the 
aristocracy, if the Duke should head it against Reform — 
the contempt for the aristocracy if the Duke should 
countermarch it to Reform — the release of all extremes of 
more free opinions, on the return which must take place, 
sooner or later, of a liberal administration ; — the danger is, 
lest these and similar causes should in times, when all 
institutions have lost the venerable moss of custom, and 
are regarded solely for their utility — induce a desire for 
stronger innovations than these merely of reform. 

" Xo thing," said a man who may be called the prophet 
of revolutions, "destroys a monarchy while the people 
trust the King. Bat persons and things are too easily 
confounded, and to lose faith in the representative of an 
institution, forbodes the decease of the institution itself." 
Attached as I am by conviction to a monarchy for this 
country — an institution that I take the liberty humbly to 
say I have elsewhere vindicated, with more effect, perhaps, 
as coming from one known to embrace the cause of the 
people, than the more vehement declamations of slaves and 
courtiers —I view such a prospect with alarm, And not 



28 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

the less so, because Order is of more value than the 
Institutions which are but formed to guard it ; and in the 
artificial and complicated affairs of this country, a struggle 
against monarchy would cost the tranquillity of a generation. 

We are standing on a present, surrounded by fearful 
warnings from the past. The dismissal of a ministry too 
liberal for a King — too little liberal for the people, is to be 
found a common event in the stormiest pages of human 
history. It is like the parting with a common mediator, 
and leaves the two extremes to their own battle. 

And now, my Lord, before I speak of what ought to be, 
and I am convinced will be the conduct of the people, who 
are about to be made the judge of the question at issue, 
let me say a few words upon the Cabinet that is no more. 
I am not writing a panegyric on the Whigs — I leave that 
to men who wore their uniform and owned their leaders. 
I have never done so. In the palmiest days of their power, 
I stooped not the knee to them. By vote, pen, and speech, 
I have humbly but honestly asserted my own independence ; 
and I had my reward in the sarcasms and the depreciation 
of that party which seemed likely for the next quarter of a 
century to be the sole dispensers of the ordinary prizes of 
ambition. ISTo matter. I wanted not their favours, and 
could console myself for the thousand little obstacles, by 
which a powerful party can obstruct the parliamentary 
progress of one who will not adopt their errors. I do not 
write the panegyric of the Whig, and though I am not 
one of those who can be louder in vituperation when the 
power is over, than in warning before the offence is done, 
I have not, I own, the misplaced generosity to laud now 
the errors which I have always lamented. It cannot be 
denied, my Lord, or at least I cannot deny it, that the 
Whig government disappointed the people. And by the 
Whig government I refer to that of my Lord Grey. Not 
so much because it did not go far enough, as with some ill 
judged partizans is contended, but rather because it went 
too far. It went too far, my Lord, when its first act was 
to place Sir Charles Sutton in the Speaker's chair, — it 
went too far when it passed the Coercion Bill — it went 
too far when it defended Sinecures — it went too far 
when it marched its army to protect the Pension list. 
— It might have denied many popular changes — if it had 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 29 

not defended and enforced unpopular measures. — It could 
not do all that the people expected, but where was the 
necessity of doing what the people never dreamt of ? 
Some might have regretted when it was solely Whig — 
but how many were disgusted when it seemed three parts 
Tory ! Nor was this all — much that it did was badly 
done : there was a want of practical knowledge in the 
principle and the details of many of its measures — it often 
blundered and it often bungled. But these were the faults 
of a past Cabinet. The Cabinet of Lord Melbourne had 
not been tried. There was a vast difference between the 
two administrations, and that difference was this — in the 
one the more liberal party was the minority, in the other it 
was the majority. In the Cabinet of the late Premier, the 
weight of Sir John Hobhouse, Lord Duncannon, and the 
Earl of Mulgrave was added to the scale of the people. 
There was in the Cabinet just dissolved a majority of men 
whose very reputation was the popular voice, whose names 
were as wormwood to the Tories, and to whom it is amusing 
to contrast the language applied by the Tory Journals 
with that which greeted "in liquid lines mellinuously 
bland," the luke-warm reformers they supplanted. Lord 
Melbourne's Cabinet had not been tried — It is tried now 
— The King has dismissed it in favour of the Duke of 
Wellington ! His Majesty took the earliest opportunity 
and the faintest pretext in the royal power to prove that 
he thought it more liberal than the Cabinet which preceded 
it. If some cry out with the Tories — " Nay, what said 
Lord Brougham at the Edinburgh dinner ? " the answer is 
obvious. Without lending any gloss to the expressions of 
that singular and unfortunate speech, it is enough to 
remind the people that Lord Brougham, though a great 
orator and a great man, able to play many parts, cannot 
fill up the whole rdles of the Cabinet. Three other Cabinet 
ministers were present, Sir John Hobhouse, Mr. Ellice, 
Mr. Abercromby. Did they echo the sentiments of Lord 
Brougham ? No ; they declared only their sympathy with 
the sentiments of Lord Durham. They too lamented every 
hour that passed over "recognized and unreformed abuses ;" 
they adopted Lord Durham's principle as their own. The 
Chancellor, since he quoted so reverently the royal name, 
may have uttered the royal sentiments, but three of his 



30 THE PKESENT CRISIS. 

colleagues before his very face uttered only the sentiments 
which were those of the people when they elected a re- 
formed parliament for the snpport of reforming ministers. 
By these three speakers, and not by the one speaker, are we 
to judge, then, in common fairness of what the government 
would have done. The majority of the Cabinet were of the 
principles of these speakers. Had even Lord Brougham 
been an obstacle to those principles when they came to be 
discussed in the Cabinet, Lord Brougham would have 
succumbed and not the principles. Of the condnct of that 
remarkable man it is not now necessary to speak ; nor is it 
by these hasty lines, nor perhaps by so nnable a hand, that 
so intricate a character can be accurately and profoundly 
analysed. When the time comes that may restore him to 
office, it will be the fitting season for shrewder judges of 
character than I am, to speak firmly and boldly of his 
merits or his faults. At present it is no slight blame to 
one so long in public life — so eminent and so active — to 
say that his friends consider him a riddle : if he be mis- 
construed, whose fault is it but his own? When the 
Delphic oracle could be interpreted two ways, what 
wonder that the world grew at last to consider it a cheat ! 
With Lor dMelbourne himself, it was my lot in early 
youth to be brought in contact, and, though our acquaint- 
ance has now altogether ceased, (for I am not one who 
seeks to refresh the memories of men in proportion as they 
become great,) I still retain a lively impression of his pro- 
fundity as a scholar — of his enthusiasm at generous senti- 
ments — and of that happy frame of mind he so peculiarly 
possesses, and of which the stuff of Statesmen is best made, 
at once practical and philosophical, large enough to con- 
ceive principles, — close enough to bring them to effect.* 
Could we disentangle and remove ourselves from the pre- 
sent, could we fancy ourselves in a future age, it might 
possibly be thus that an historian would describe him : — 
" Few persons could have been selected by a king, as prime 
minister, in those days of violent party, and of constant 

* I imagined Mm susceptible onl) T to the charge of indolence, and I once 
imputed to him that fault. On learning from those who can best judge, 
that in office at least the imputation was unjust, I took, long since, the 
opportunity of a new edition to efface it from the work in which the impu- 
tation was made. 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 31 

change, who were more fitted by nature and circumstances 
to act with the people, but for the King. A Politician pro- 
bably less ardent than sagacious, he was exactly the man to 
conform to the genius of a particular time ; — to know how 
far to go with prudence — where to stop with success ; not 
vehement iu temper, not inordinate in ambition, he was not 
likely to be hurried away by private objects, affections, or 
resentments. To the moment of his elevation as premier, 
it can scarcely be said of his political life that it affords one 
example of imprudence. 'Not to commit himself,' was at 
one time supposed to be his particular distinction. His 
philosophy was less that which deals with abstract doctrines 
than that which teaches how to command shifting and 
various circumstances. He seldom preceded his time, and 
never stopped short of it. Add to this, that with a search- 
ing knowledge of mankind, he may have sought to lead, 
but never to deceive, them. His was the high English 
statesmanship which had not recourse to wiles or artifice. 
He was one whom a king might have trusted, for he was 
not prone to deceive himself, and he would not deceive 
another. His judgment wary — his honour impregnable. 
Such was the minister who, if not altogether that which 
the people would have selected, seems precisely that which 
a king should have studied to preserve. He would not have 
led, as by a more bold and vigorous genius, Lord Durham, 
equally able, equally honest, with perhaps a yet deeper 
philosophy, the result of a more masculine and homely 
knowledge of mankind, and a more prophetic vision of 
the spirit of the age, might have done ; he would not have 
led the People to good government, but he would have 
marched with them side by side." 

Such, I believe, will be the outline of the character Lord 
Melbourne will bequeath to a calmer and more remote time. 
And this is not my belief alone. I observe that most of 
those independent members who had been gradually de- 
tached from the Cabinet of Lord Grey, looked with hope 
and friendly dispositions to that of his successor. In most 
of the recent public meetings and public dinners where the 
former Cabinet was freely blamed, there was a willingness 
to trust the later one. And even those who would have 
wreaked on the government their suspicions of the Chan- 
cellor were deterred by Lord Durham's honest eulogium on 



32 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

the Premier. This much then we must concede to the 
Melbourne administration. First, it went a step beyond 
Lord Grey's, it embraced the preponderating, instead of 
the lesser, number of men of the more vigorous and liberal 
policy. The faults of Lord Grey's government are not 
fairly chargeable upon it. Men of the independent party 
hoped more from it. 

Secondly, by what we know, it seems to have been in 
earnest as to its measures, for we know this, that the 
Corporation Reform was in preparation — that the Com- 
mission into the Irish Church had produced reports which 
were to be fairly acted upon — that a great measure of 
justice to Ireland was to be based upon the undeniable 
evidence which that Commission afforded of her wrongs. 
We know this, — and knowing no more, we see the Cabinet 
dissolved, — presumption in its favour, since we have seen 
its successor ! 

But, my Lord, if we may speak thus in favour of that 
Cabinet which your abilities adorned, and in hope of the 
services which it would have rendered us, we must not for- 
get that we are about in the approaching election, to have 
not the expectation of good government, but the power of 
securing it. We must demand from the candidates who 
are disposed to befriend and restore you, not vague assur- 
ances of support to one set of men or the other, to the 
principles of Lord Grey or those of Lord Melbourne, but to 
the principles of the people. Your friends must speak out, 
and boldly — they must place a wide distinction, by candid 
and explicit declarations, between themselves and their 
Tory antagonists. Sir Edward Sugden said at Cambridge 
that he was disposed to reform temperately all abuses. 
The Emperor of Russia would say the same. Your partizans 
must specify what abuses they will reform, and to what 
extent they will go. The people must see, on the one hand, 
defined reform, in order to despise indefinite reformers on 
the other. Let your friends come forward manfully and 
boldly as befits honest men in stirring times, and the same 
people who gave the last majority to Lord Grey, will give 
an equal support to a cabinet yet more liberal, and dismissed 
only because it was felt to be in earnest. I know what the 
conduct of all who are temperate and honest among re- 
formers ought to be. It is the cry of those who have com- 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 33 

promised themselves with, their constituents in their too 
implicit adherence to the measures of Lord Grey, that " All 
differences must cease — Whig and Radical must forget 
their small dissensions — all must unite against a common 
enemy." A convenient cry for them ; they are willing now 
to confound themselves with us, to take shelter under our 
popularity ! — For we, my Lord — and let this be a lesson to 
the next Parliament — we are safe. Of us who have not 
subscribed implicitly to Lord Grey's government — of us 
who have been more liberal than that government — of us 
who have not defended its errors, nor, what was worse, de- 
fended the errors of its Tory predecessors, — I do not believe 
that a single member will lose his seat ! The day of election 
will be to us a day of triumph. We have not enjoyed the 
emoluments and honours of a victorious party — we have 
not basked in the ministerial smiles — we have been depre- 
ciated by lame humour, as foolish and unthinking men, and 
stigmatized by a lamer calumny as revolutionary Destruc- 
tives. But we had our consolation — we have found it in 
our consistency and our conscience — in our own self- 
acquittal, and in the increased esteem of our constituents. 
And now they need our help ! Shall they have it ? I trust 
yes ! We can forgive jests at our expense, for nobody 
applauded them, and they were not echoed, my Lord, by the 
majority of the Cabinet. One man might disavow us — one 
man might not enter our house nor travel by our coach, (it 
is not we who have now pulled down the house, or upset 
the conveyance!) but three of his colleagues asserted our 
principles, and we felt that there spoke the preponderating 
voice of the ministry. I trust, and I feel assured, that we 
shall forget minor differences, when we have great and in- 
effaceable distinctions to encounter. I trust that we shall 
show we are sensible we have it now in our power to prove 
that we fought for no selfish cause — that we were not 
thinking of honours and office for ourselves — that we shall 
show we wished to make our principles, not our interests, 
triumphant ; — willing that others should be the agents for 
carrying them into effect. This should be our sentiment, 
and this our revenge. All men who care for liberty should 
unite — all private animosities, all partial jealousies should 
be merged. We should remember only that some of us 
have advocated good measures more than others; but that, 

L) 



34 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

the friends of the New Ministry have opposed all. Haroun 
Alraschid, the caliph of immortal memory, went out one 
night disguised, as was his wont, and attended by his 
favourite Giaffer ; — they pretended to be merchants in dis- 
tress, and asked charity. The next morning two candidates 
for a place in the customs appeared before the divan. The 
sultan gave the preference to one of them. " Sire," whis- 
pered Giaffer, " don't you recollect that that man only gave 
us a piece of silver when we asked for a piece of gold ? " 
" And don't you recollect," answered Haroun, "that the 
other man, when we asked for a piece of silver, called for a 
cudgel ? " 

Looking temperately back at the proceedings of the 
Whigs, we must confess that they have greater excuses, 
than at the time we were aware of. " Who shall read," 
says the proverb, "the inscrutable heart of kings ?" We 
could not tell now far the Monarch was with us : rumours 
and suspicions were afloat — but we were unwilling to 
believe them of William the Reformer. We imagined his 
Majesty, induced by secret and invisible advisers, might 
indeed be timid, and reluctant ; but we imagined, also, 
that the government, by firmness, might bias the royal 
judgment to a consistent and uniformly paternal policy. 
Many of us, (though, for my own part, I foresaw and fore- 
told'"" that the Tory party, so far from being crushed, were 
but biding their time, scotched not killed) — many of us 
supposed the Tories more humbled and more out of the 
reach of office, than the Cabinet, with a more prophetic 
vision, must have felt they were. With a House of Lords, 
which the Ministers had neither the power to command nor 
to reform — with a King, whose secret, and it may be 
stubborn inclinations, are now apparent, — surrounded by 
intrigues and cabals, and sensible that the alternative of a 
Tory government was not so impossible as the public 
believed, we must, in common candour, make many excuses 
for men, who, however inclined to the people, had also 
every natural desire to preserve the balance of the consti- 
tution — to maintain the second chamber, and to pay to the 
wishes of the King that deference,' which, as the third 
voice of the legislature, his Majesty is entitled to receive. 

* England and the English, 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 35 

Add to this, if they resigned office, the King would have 
had the excuse he has not now : he would have had no 
alternative but a Tory Cabinet ! It is true, however, that 
so beset with difficulties, their wisest course would have 
been to remember the end and origin of all government — 
have thrown themselves on the people and abided the con- 
sequences — and that, my Lord, is exactly what I believe 
your colleagues and yourself intended to do, and it is for 
that reason you are dismissed. A few months will show, a 
few months will allow you to explain yourselves ; but I 
should not address to your Lordship this letter — I should 
not commit myself to a vain prophecy — I should not volun- 
tarily incur your own contempt for my simplicity, if I had 
not the fullest reason to believe, that the occasion is only 
wanting to acquit yourself to the public. 

Considering these circumstances with candour — the 
situation of the last ministry — the dissolution of the pre- 
sent, and the reasons for that dissolution ; considering also 
the first enthusiasm of the Reform Bill, which induced so 
many members, with the purest motives, to place confi- 
dence in the men who had obtained it ; — we shall find now 
excuses for much of whatever temporising we may yet 
desire for the future to prevent : and to prevent it must be 
our object at the next election. 

On all such members of the Whig majority as will declare 
for the future for a more energetic and decided conduct, so 
as to lead the government through counteracting obstacles, 
and both encourage, if willing, and force it, if hesitating, 
to a straightforward and uncompromising policy, the elec- 
tors cannot but look with indulgence. Such candidates 
have only to own on their part, that any dallying with 
" recognized abuse " has been the result not of inclination, 
but of circumstance, and the difficulties of circumstance 
will be at once remembered. For those who will not make 
this avowal, whatever their name, they are but Tories at 
heart, and as such they must be considered. This is what 
the late Cabinet itself, if I have construed it rightly, must 
desire ; and if we act thus, with union and with firmness, 
with charity to others, but with justice to our principles, 
we shall return to the next Parliament a vast majority of 
men who will secure the establishment of a government 
that no intrigue can undermine, no oligarchy supplant; 

I) 2 



36 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

based upon a broad union of all reformers, and entitled to 
the gratitnde of the people, not by perpetually reminding 
it of one obligation, but by constantly feeding it with new 
ones. Of such a Cabinet I know that you, my Lord, will 
be one ; and I believe that you will find yourself not per- 
haps among all, but among many of your old companions, 
and no longer without the services of one man in particular 
whose name is the synonym of the people's confidence. 
Taught by experience,*"* there must then be no compromise 
with foes — no Whig organ holding out baits of office to Sir 
Robert Peel — no speeches of " little" having a successor in 
"less" — no crowding popular offices with Tory malcon- 
tents — no ceding to an anti-national interest, however 
venerable its name — no clipping to please the Lords — no 
refusing to nnfurl the sail when the wind is fair, unless 
Mrs. Partington will promise not to mop up the ocean ! 

At present we are without a government ; we have only 
a dictator. His Grace the Duke of Wellington outbids my 
Lord Brougham in versatility. He stands alone, the repre- 
sentative of all the offices of this great empire. India is in 
one pocket, our colonies in the other t — see him now at the 
Home Office, and now at the Horse Guards ; Law, State, 
and Army, each at his command — Jack of all trades, and 
master of none — but that of war ; — we ask for a cabinet, 
and see bnt a soldier. 

Meanwhile, eager and panting, flies the Courier to Sir 
Robert Peel ! — grave Sir Robert ! How well we can pic- 
ture his prudent face ! — with what solemn swiftness will he 
obey the call ! how demurely various must be his medita- 
tions ! — how ruffled his stately motions at the night-and- 
day celerity of his homeward progress ! Can this be the 
slow Sir Robert ? No ! I beg pardon ; he is not to discom- 

* And we have the assurance from one of the organs of the late ministers, 
in an article admirable for its temper and its tenets, that this lesson is 
already taught. " The leaders of the liberal party must have at last learned 
the utter futility of every attempt to conciliate the supporters of existing 
abuses — they must now know that secret enmity is ever watching the occa- 
sion of wounding them unawares, and that the public men who would con- 
tend against it can only maintain themselves by exhibiting a frank and full 
reliance on the popular support, and meriting it by an unflinching assertion 
of popular principles." — Globe, Nov. 17. 

f "' His grace will superintend generally the affairs of the government, 
till the return of Sir Robert Peel." So says the Morning Post. But the 
JPost isyery angry if any one else says the same. 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 37 

pose himself. I sec, by the papers, that it is only the 

Courier that is to go at " minute speed " — the Neophyte of 

Reform is to travel " by easy stages" — we must wait 

patiently his movements — God knows we shall want 

patience by and by ; his stages will be easy enough in 

the road the Times wishes him to travel ! 

The new political Hamlet ! — how applicable the situation 

of his parallel! — how well can his Horatio, (Twiss,) were 

he himself the courier, break forth with the exposition of 

the case — 

. . . . "For.inbras* 
Of un improved mettle hot and full, 
Sharks up a list of brainless resolutes 
For food and diet to some enterprise, 
That hath a stomach in't, which is no other, 
As it doth well appear unto the state, 
Hut to recover for us by strong hand, 
And terms compulsatory, our — ' offices.' 

'1 his, I take it, 

Is the main motive of our preparations, 

The source of this our watch, and the chief head 

Of this post-haste and romage in the land ! 

[Enter the Ghost of the old Tory Rule.] 

" 'Tis here — 'tis here — 'tis gone ! " 

[Xow appears Hamlet himself, arms folded, brow thoughtful. — Sir Robert 
iv as always a solemn man .'] 

[Enter the same Ghost of Tory Ascendancy, in the likeness of old Sir 

Robert.'] 

11 My father's spirit in arms ! 



Thou eom'st in such a questionable shape, 
That I will speak to thee. 

Tell, 

Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, 
Have burst their cerements." 

Whereat good Horatio wooingly observes — 
" It beckons you to go away with it." 

Our Hamlet is in doubt. The Tory sway was an excellent 
thing when alive, but to follow the ghost now, may lead to 
the devil; nevertheless, Horatio says, shrewdly, 

" The very place puts toys of desperation, 
"Without more motive, into every brain!" 



* Fortinbras, Anglice " Strong Arm "—literally "the Duke." 



38 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

The temptation is too great, poor Hamlet is decoyed, and 
the wise Marcellus, (the Herries of the play,) disinterestedly 
observes, 

"Let's follow!" 

Alas ! we may well exclaim, then, with the soft Horatio, 
" To what issue will this come ? " 

And reply with the sensible Marcellus, who sums up the 
whole affair, 

" Something is rotten in the state of Denmark ! " 

We need not further pursue the parallel, though inviting, 
especially in that passage, where to be taken for a rat, is 
the prelude to destruction. Leave we Hamlet undisturbed 
to his soliloquy, 

" To be, or not to be — that is the question," 

And that question is unresolved. Will Sir Robert Peel 
commit himself at last—will he join the administration — 
will he, prudent and wary, set the hopes of his party, the 
reputation of his life, on the hazard of a die, thrown not 
for Whigs and Tories — but for Toryism, it is true, on the 
one hand, and a government far more energetic than Whig- 
gism on the other, with all the chances attendant on the 
upset of the tables in the meanwhile ? The game is not 
for the restoring, it is for the annihilation of the juste 
milieu ! If he joins the gamesters, let him ; we can yet 
give startling odds on the throw. But may he see dis- 
tinctly his position ! If he withdraw from this rash and 
ill-omened government, if he remain neutral, he holds the 
highest station in the eyes of the country, which one of his 
politics can ever hope to attain. It is true, that office may 
be out of his reach, but to men of a large and a generous 
ambition, there are higher dignities than those which office 
can bestow. He will stand a power in himself — a man 
true to principle, impervious to temptation ; he will vindi- 
cate nobly, not to this time only, but to posterity, his single 
change upon the Catholic Emancipation ; he will prove 
that no sordid considerations influenced that decision. He 
will stand alone and aloft, with more than the practical 
sense, with all the moral weight of Chateaubriand — one 
whom all parties must honour, whose counsels must be 
respected by the most liberal, as by the most Tory, cabinet. 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 39 

Great in his talents — greater in his position — greatest in 
his honour. But if he mix himself irrevocably with the 
insane and unprincipled politicians, who now seek either to 
deceive or subdue the people, he is lost for ever. That 
ministry have but this option, to refuse all reform and to 
brave the public, or to carry, in contempt of all honesty, 
measures at least as liberal as those which he, as well as 
they, opposed when proceeding from the Whigs. Will he 
be mad enough to do the one — will he be base enough to 
do the other ? Can he be a tyrant, or will he be a turn- 
coat ? His may be the ambition which moderate men have 
assigned to him — an ambition prudent and sincere : — His 
may be a name on which the posterity that reads of these 
eventful times, will look with approval and respect; — on 
the other hand, the alternative is not tempting — it is to be 
deemed the creature of office, and the dupe of the Duke 
of Wellington ! Imagine his situation, rising to support 
either the measures which must be carried by the soldiers, 
or those which would have been proposed by the Whigs — 
bully or hypocrite ; — what an alternative for one who can 
yet be (how few in this age may become the same !) a 
great man ! And this too, mainly from one quality that he 
has hitherto carried to that degree in which it becomes 
genius. That quality is Prudence ! all his reputation de- 
pends on his never being indiscreet! He is in the situation 
of a prude of a certain age, who precisely because she may 
be a saint, the world has a double delight in damning as a 
sinner. Sweet, tempted Innocence, beware the one false 
step ! turn from the old Duke ! list not the old Lord Eldon! 
allow not his Grace of Cumberland (irresistible seducer!) 
to come too near ! Susanna, Susanna, what lechers these 
Elders are ! 

But enough of speculation for the present on an uncer- 
tain event. We have only now to look to what is sure 
and that is a New Parliament.^ They hint at the policy 

* Since writing the above, it seems to be a growing opinion among men 
of all parries, that if' Sir Robert Peel join the Ministers, they will meet 
Parliament — for the sake of mntnal explanations ! — But the Duke is a 
prompt man, and lores to take us by surprise — we must be prepared ! 

Addendum to Third Edition. — And now we have additional reason to be 
prepared, and to acknowledge how little to-morrow can depend on the reports 
of to-day. 

''We owe it to our readers to acknowledge that we have much less hope 
of a dissolution of parliament being dispensed with than we had on Saturday. 



40 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

of trying this : let them ! I think they would dissolve us 
the second day of our meeting ! 

And now, my Lord, deviating from the usual forms of 
correspondence, permit me, instead of addressing your Lord- 
ship, to turn for a few moments to our mutual friends — 
the Electors of England. 

I wish them clearly and distinctly to understand, the 
grounds and the results of the contest we are about to try. 
I do not write these lines for the purpose of converting the 
Conservatives — far from me so futile an attempt. With one 
illustrious example before our eyes, what man of sense can 
dream of the expediency of attempting to convert our foes? 
I write only to that great multitude of men of all grades of 
property and rank, who returned to the Reformed Parlia- 
ment its vast reforming majority. Thank God, that 
electoral body is as yet unaltered. Who knows, if it now 
neglect its duty, how long it may remain the same ! I 
have before spoken, Electors of England, of what seems to 
me likely to be your conduct. But let us enter into that 
speculation somewhat more minutely. There are some who 
tell us that you are indifferent to the late changes, and 
careless of the result, — who laugh at the word " Crisis " 
and disown its application. Are you yourselves, then, 
thoroughly awakened to your position, to the mighty 
destinies at your command ? I will not dwell at length 
upon the fearful anxiety with which your decision will be 
looked for in Foreign Nations ; for we must confess, that 
engrossed as we have lately been in domestic affairs, 
Foreign Nations have for us but a feeble and lukewarm 
interest. But we are still the great English people, the 
slightest change in whose constitutional policy vibrates 
from corner to corner of the civilized world. We are still 
that people, who have grown great, not by the extent of 
our possessions, not by the fertility of our soil, not by the 
wild ambition of our conquests ; but, by the success of our 

The caballing of the metropolitan members, and a repetition of the kind of 
display made on Friday at Stroud, may render it impossible for any govern- 
ment, not prepared to sacrifice the Xing, to go on -with the present House of 
Commons.*' — (Standard, Nov. 24.) Let other than the metropolitan 
members cabal ! Let there be other displays than those at Stroud. We see 
the force attached to the, e e demonstrations ; we have no cause to fear a 
dissolution : the threat does not awe us ; — we would not sacrifice the King, 
and therefore we would rescue him from his advisers. 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 41 

commerce, and the preservation of our liberties. The in- 
fluence of England has been that of a moral power, not 
derived from regal or oligarchic, or aristocratic ascendancy; 
but from the enterprise and character of her people. We 
are the Great Middle Class of Europe. When jSTapoleon 
called us a bourgeois nation, in one sense of the word he 
was right. What the middle class is to us, that we are to 
the world ! — a part of the body politic of civilization, re- 
mote alike from Ochlocracy^ and Despotism, and drawing 
its dignity — its power — its very breath — from its freedom. 
The Duke of Wellington and his band are to be in office : 
for when we are met with the cry, " Perhaps the Duke 
himself will not take office at all," what matters it to us 
whether he be before the stage or behind the scenes — 
whether he represent the borough himself, or appoint his 
nominees — the votes will be the same ! — The Duke and his 
band are to be in office ! what to the last hour have been 
their foreign politics ? — wherever tyranny the grossest was 
to be defended — wherever liberty the most moderate was 
to be assailed — there have they lent their aid ! The King 
of Holland trampling on his subjects was " our most 
ancient ally," whom ''nothing but the worst revolutionary 
doctrines could induce us to desert." Charles X. vainly 
urging his Ordinances against the Parliament and the Press 
at the point of the bayonet, was an "injured monarch," 
and the people " a rebellious mob." The despotism of 
Austria is an " admirable government" — with Russia it is 
"insolence" to interfere in behalf of Poland. Miguel 
himself, blackened by such crimes as the worst period of 
the Eoman empire cannot equal, is eulogized as " the illus- 
trious victim of foreign swords." Not the worst excesses 
that belong to despotism, from the bonds of the negro to 
the blood of a people, have been beneath the praises of your 
present government — not the most moderate resistance that 
belongs to liberty has escaped their stigma. This is no 
exaggeration ; chapter and verse, their very speeches are 

* Ochlocracy, Mob-rule ; the proper antithesis to democracy, which 
(though perverted from its true signification) is People-rule. Tories are 
often great ochlocrats, as their favourite mode of election, in which mobs 
are bought with beer, can testify. Lord Chandos's celebrated clause in the 
Eeform Bill was ochlocratic. Ochlocracy is the plebeian partner of oligarch v, 
carrying on the business under another name. The extremes meet, or, as the 
Eastern proverb informs us, when the serpent wants to seem innocent, it 
puts its tail in its mouth ! 



42 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

before us, and out of their own mouths do we condemn 
them. Can we then be insensible, little as we may regard 
our more subtle relations with foreign states — can we be 
insensible to the links which bind us with our fellow-crea- 
tures ; no matter in what region of the globe ? Can we 
feel slightly the universal magnitude of the interests now 
resting on our resolves ? Believe me, wherever the inso- 
lence of power is brooding on new restraints, wherever — 
some men, " in the chamber of dark thought," are forging 
fetters for other countries or their own — there is indeed a 
thrill of delight at the accession of the Duke of Wellington! 
But wherever Liberty struggles successfully, or suffers in 
vain — wherever Opinion has raised its voice — wherever 
Enlightenment is at war with Darkness, and Patience 
rising against Abuse — there will be but one feeling of 
terror at these changes, and one feeling of anxious hope 
for the resolution which you, through whose votes speaks 
the voice of England, may form at this awful crisis. Shall 
that decision be unworthy of you ? 

If we pass from foreign nations to Ireland, (which un- 
happily we have often considered as foreign to us,) what 
can we expect from the Duke of Wellington's tender 
mercies ? Recollect that there will be no peace for England 
while Ireland remains as it is. Cabinet after Cabinet has 
been displaced, change after change has convulsed us, mea- 
sures the most vital to England have been unavoidably 
postponed to discussion on Bills for Ireland ; night upon 
night, session upon session of precious time have been 
thrown away, because we have not done for Ireland what 
common sense would dictate to common justice. I have 
just returned from that country. I have seen matters with 
my own eyes. Having assuredly no sympathy with the 
question of Repeal, I have not sought the judgment of 
Repealers — of the two, I have rather solicited that of the 
Orangemen : for knowing by what arguments misgovern- 
ment can be assailed, I was anxious to learn, in its strong- 
hold, by what arguments misgovernment can be defended. 
And J declare solemnly, that it seems to me the universal 
sentiment of all parties, that Grod does not look down upon 
any corner of the earth in which the people are more 
supremely wretched, or in which a kind, fostering, and 
paternal government is more indispensably needed. That 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 43 

people arc Catholic. Hear what the Duke of Wellington 
deems necessary for them. 

" The object of the government, (for Ireland,) after the 
passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, shonld have 
been to do all in their power to conciliate — whom ? The 
Protestants ! Every thing had been granted to the Roman 
Catholics that they conld require ! " — The Duke of Welling- 
ton's Speech. Hansard, p. 950, vol. xix. 3rd Series. Every- 
thing a people groaning under each species of exaction that 
ever took the name of religion can require ! This state- 
ment may delight the Orangemen, but will it content 
Ireland ? that is the question. As for the Orangemen 
themselves, with their Christian zeal, and their Mahometan 
method of enforcing it ; — with their — " here is our Koran," 
and "there is our sword," — they remind us only of that 
ingenious negro, to whom his master, detecting him in some 
offence, put the customary query — " What, sir, do you 
never make use of your bible ? " — " Yes, massa, me trap my 
razor on it sometime ! " So, with these gentlemen, they 
seem to think that the only use of the bible is to sharpen 
their steels upon it ! 

The story of the Negro recalls us to the Colonies : what 
effect will this change have upon the fate of the late Slave 
Population ? By our last accounts, the managers, instead 
of co-operating with the local authorities, were rather 
striving to exasperate the Negroes into conduct, which must 
produce a failure of that grand experiment of humanity. — 
The news arrives, — (just before Christmas too,' — what a 
season !) the managers see in office, the very men, who not 
only opposed the experiment, but who prophesied the 
failure : — they know well, that if the failure occur, it is not 
to them, that the new government will impute the blame — 
they know well that a prophet is rarely displeased with the 
misfortunes he foretells. Is there no danger in all this ? 
And shall we be told that this is no crisis ? that there is 
nothing critical in these changes — nothing to reverse or 
even to affect our relations with Ireland, the Colonies, and 
the Continent — nothing that we should lament, and nothing 
that we should fear ? 

And now, looking only to ourselves, is there nothing 
critical in the state of England ? 

You must remember that whatever parliament you elect 



44 THE PRESENT CEISIS. 

will have the right of remodelling that parliament ! The 
same legislative power that reformed can un- reform. If 
you give to the Duke of Wellington a majority in the House 
of Commons, you give him the whole power of this Empire 
for six years. If a liberal House of Commons should ever 
go too far, you have a King and a House of Lords to stop 
the progress. If a conservative House of Commons should 
go too far in the opposite extreme, who will check its pro- 
ceedings ? You may talk of public opinion — you may talk 
of resistance — but when y oar three branches of the legisla- 
ture are against you, with what effect could you resist ? 
You might talk vehemently — could you act successfully ; — 
when you were no longer supported by your representatives, 
— when to act would be to rebel ! The law and the army 
would be both against you. How can you tell to what 
extent the one might be stretched or the other increased ? 
Vainly then would you say, "In our next parliament we 
will be wiser ; " in your next parliament the people might be 
no longer the electors ! There cannot be a doubt but that, 
if the parliament summoned by the Duke be inclined to 
support the Duke, the provisions of the Reform Bill will 
be changed. Slight alterations in the franchise — raising it 
where men are free, lowering it where men can be intimi- 
dated, making it different for towns and for agricultural 
districts, working out in detail the principles of Lord 
Chandos, may suffice to give you a constituency of slaves. 
This is no idle fear — the Reform Transformed will be the 
first play the new company will act, if you give them a 
stage — it is a piece they have got by heart ! Over and 
over again have they said at their clubs, in public and in 
private, that the Reform Bill ought to be altered.* They 

* And Lord Strangford seems to speak out pretty boldly at the Ashford 
dinner. " It was true that among the institutions of the country, there was 
something that might be amended and improved, but there was much more 
that required to be placed in its pristine state of purity. That that would 
come to pass he felt sure, when he saw so many around him thinking as he 
did," &c. Pristine state of purity! But what so pure as the rotten 
boroughs ? What so pure as the old parliamentary system ? And if the 
restoration of these immaculate blessings depends upon seeing "many 
around him who thought as he did," where will his Lordship find those of 
that philosophy, except in the party now in power ? It matters not what 
Lord Strangford meant should be restored to its pristine purity. He may 
say it was not the old parliamentary system. What was it then? Is there 
a single thing which the Reformed Parliament has altered that the people 
wish to see restored to u its pristine purity? " But then we are told that 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 45 

may now disavow any such, intention. Calling themselves 
reformers, they may swear to protect reform. Bat how can 
you believe them ? " Abu Rafe is witness to the fact, but 
who will be witness for Abu B/efe ? " * By their own con- 
fessions, if they call themselves reformers, they would be 
liars ; if they are false in one thing, will they not be false 
in another ? Are they to be trusted because they own 
they have been insincere ? If we desire to know in what 
light even the most honourable Tories consider public 
promises, shall we forget Sir George Murray and the dis- 
senters ? Do not fancy they will not hazard an attempt on 
your liberties — they will hazard it, if you place the House 
of Commons in their hands. "Whatever their fault, it is not 
that of a want of courage. You talk of Public Opinion — 
history tells us that public opinion can be kept down. It 
is the nature of slavery, that as it creeps on, it accustoms 
men to its yoke. They may feel, but they are not willing 
always to struggle. Where was the iron-hearted Public 
Opinion, that confronted the first Charles, threw its shield 
round the person of Hampden, abolished the star-chamber, 
and vindicated the rights of England, when, but a few years 
afterwards, a less accomplished and a more unprincipled 
monarch, sent Sydney to the block — judges decided against 
law — Parliament itself was suspended — and the tyrant of 
England was the pensioner of France ? The power of 
jDublic opinion woke afterwards in the reign of James II. 
but from how shameful a slumber — and to what even 
greater perils than that of domestic tyranny, had we not 
been exposed in the interval ! Nothing but the forbearance 
of the Continent itself saved us from falling a prey to 
whatever vigorous despot might have conceived the design. 
With the same angry, but impotent dejection with which 
Public Opinion beheld the country spoiled of its Parliament 
— its martyrs consigned to the block — its governors harlots, 
and its King a hireling — it saw, unavenged, the Dutch fleet 
riding up the Thames, — the war- ships of England burnt 
before the very eyes of her Capital, — and "the nation," to 

we are cot to judge the Duke by tlie language of his supporters. By what 
are we to judge of him then r Either by their language or his own: it is 
quite indifferent which. But perhaps Tory speeches are like witches' 
prayers, and are to be read backwards ! 
* Gibbon. 



46 THE PJRESENT CRISIS. 

quote even Hume's courtly words, " though the King ever 
appeared but in sport (!) exrjosed to the ruin and ignominy 
of a foreign conquest. " Happily, Austria then was not as 
it is now — profound in policy, stern in purpose, indomitable 
in its hate to England ; Russia was not looking abroad for 
conquests, aspiring to the Indian Empire, and loathing the 
freemen who dare to interfere for Poland. We were saved, 
but not by your Public Opinion ! You may boast of the 
nineteenth century, and say, such things cannot happen to- 
day ; but the men of Cromwell's time boasted equally of 
the spirit of the seventeenth, and were equally confident, 
that liberty was eternal ? And even at this day have we 
not seen in France, how impotent is mere opinion ? Have 
not the French lost all the fruits of their Revolution ? Are 
not the Ordinances virtually carried ? and why ? Because 
the French parted with the power out of their own hands, 
under the idea that public opinion was a power sufficient in 
itself ? "When the man first persuaded the horse to try (by 
way of experiment) the saddle and bridle, what was his 
argument ? — "My good friend, you are much stronger than 
I am ; you can kick me off again if you don't like me — 
your will is quite enough to dislodge me; — come — the 
saddle — it is but a ride, recollect! — come, open your 
mouth — Lord have mercy, what fine teeth ! — how you could 
bite if I displeased you. So so, old boy !" — What's the 
moral ? The man is riding the horse to this day ! — Public 
opinion is but the expression of the prevalent power. The 
people have now the power, and public opinion is its voice; 
let them give away the power, and what is opinion ? — vox, 
(indeed,) et prceterea nihil — the voice and — nothing more ! 
It is madness itself in you, who have now the option of 
confirming or rejecting the Duke of Wellington's govern- 
ment, to hesitate in your choice. They tell you to try the 
men ; have you not tried them before ? Has not the work 
of reform been solely to undo what they have done ? If 
your late governments could not proceed more vigorously, 
who opposed them ? 

" Hark ! in the lobby hear a lion roar ; 
Say, Mr. Speaker, shall we shut the door? 
Or, Mr. Speaker, shall we let him in, 
To — try if we can turn him out again ! " 

You may say, that amongst the multiplicity of candidates 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 47 

who present themselves, and amongst the multiplicity of 
their promises, you may be unable to decide who will be 
your friends, who not. You have one test that cannot fail 
you. Ask them if they will support the Duke of Welling- 
ton. If they say " Yes, if he reform," you will know that 
they will support him if he apostatizes. He who sees no 
dishonour in apostacy, waits but his price to apostatize 
himself. " Away," said Mr. Canning, long since — " Away 
with the cant of measures, not men. The idle supposition, 
that it is the harness, not the horses that draw the chariot 
along." "In times of difficulty and danger, it is to the 
energy and character of individuals, that a nation must be 
indebted for its salvation ! " — the energy and character ! 
Doubtless, the Duke has at present energy and character ! 
I grant it ; but if he exert in your behalf the energy, will 
he keep the character ? or if he preserve his character, how 
will you like his energy ? 

Recollect that it is not for measures which you can 
foresee that caution is necessary, it is for measures that you 
cannot foresee ; it is not for what the Duke may profess to 
do, but for what he may dare to do, that you must not put 
yourselves under his command. Be not led away by some 
vague promises of taking off this tax, and lowering that. 
The empire is not for sale ! We, who gave twenty millions 
to purchase freedom for the negro, are not to accept a 
bribe for the barter of our own. One tax too may be taken 
off, but others may be put on ! They may talk to you of 
the first, but they will say nothing of the last ! Malt is a 
good thing, but even malt may be bought too dear. Did 
not the Tories blame Lord Al thorp for reducing taxation too 
much ? Are they the men likely to empty the Exchequer ? 
To drop a shilling in the street was the old trick of those 
who wanted to pick your pockets! Remember that you 
are not fighting the battle between Whigs and Tories ; if 
the Whigs return to office, they must be more than Whigs ; 
you are now fighting for things not men — for the real con- 
sequences of your reform. In your last election your grati- 
tude made you fight too much for names ; it was enough 
for your candidates to have served Lord Grey ; you must 
now return those who will serve the people. If you are 
lukewarm, if you are indifferent, if you succumb, you will 
deserve the worst. But if you exert yourselves once more, 



48 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 

with the same honesty, the same zeal, the same firm and 
enlightened virtue as two years ago ensured your triumph, 
— wherever, both now and henceforth, men honour faith, 
or sympathise with liberty, there will be those who will 
record your struggle, and rejoice in its success. These are 
no exaggerated phrases : you may or may not be insensible 
to the character of the time ; — you may or may not be in- 
different to the changes that have taken place — but the 
next election, if Parliament be dissolved by a Tory minister, 
will make itself a Date in History, — recording one of those 
ominous conjunctions in "the Old Almanack*' by which 
we calculate the chronology of the human progress. 

And, my Lord, that the conduct and the victory of our 
countrymen will be, as they have been, the one firm and 
temperate, the other honourable and assured, I do, from 
my soul, believe. Two years may abundantly suffice to 
wreck a Government, or convert a King — but scarcely to 
change a People ! *» 

I have the honour to be, 
My Lord, 
With respect and consideration, 
Your Lordship's obedient servant, 

E. LYTTON BULWER. 

London, Nov. 21, 1834. 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT,* 

IN A LETTER TO W. HARRISON AINSWOETH, ESQ., EDITOR 
OF THE "NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.'' 

Dear Mb. Editoe, — I am truly glad to see so worthily 
filled the presidency of one of the many chairs which our 
republic permits to criticism and letters — a dignity in 
which I had the honour to precede you, sub consule Planco, 
in the good days of William IV. I feel as if there were 
something ghost-like in my momentary return to my an- 
cient haunts, no longer in the editorial robe and purple, 
but addressing a new chief, and in great part, a new as- 
sembly : For the reading public is a creature of rapid 
growth — every five years a fresh generation pours forth 
from our institutes, our colleges, our schools, demanding, 
and filled with, fresh ideas, fresh principles and hopes : 
And the seas wash the place where Canute parleyed with 
the waves. 

All that interested the world, when to me (then Mr. 
Editor, now Mr. Editor's humble servant) contributors ad- 
dressed their articles — hot and seasoned for the month, and 
like all good articles to a periodical, " warranted not to 
keep," have passed away into the lumber-room, where those 
old maids, History and Criticism, hoard their scraps and 
relics, and where, amidst dust and silence, things old- 
fashioned ripen into antique. 

The roar of the Reform Bill is still, Fanny Kemble is 
Mrs. Butler, the "Hunchback " awaits upon our shelves the 
resuscitation of a new Julia ; poets of promise have become 
mute, Bubini sings no more, Macready is in the provinces ; 
" Punch " frisks it on the jocund throne of Sydney Smith, 
and over a domain once parcelled amongst many, reigns 
" Boz." Scattered and voiceless the old contributors — a 
new hum betrays the changing Babel of a new multitude. 

Gliding thus, I say, ghost-like, amidst the present race, 
busy and sanguine as the past, I feel that it best suits with 
a ghost's dignity, to appear but for an admonitory purpose ; 
not with the light and careless step of an ordinary visitor, 

* [Originally published in 1845 in the " New Monthly Magazine," from 
which it was shortly afterwards reprinted as a duodecimo of 98 pages.] 

E 



50 CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 

but with meaning stride, and finger upon lip. Ghosts, we 
know, have appeared to predict death — more gentle I, my 
apparition would only promise healing, and beckon not to 
graves and charnels, but to the Hygeian spring. 

And now that I am fairly on the ground, let us call to 
mind, Mr. Editor, the illustrious names which still over- 
shadow it at once with melancholy and fame. Your post 
has been filled by men, whose fate precludes the envy which 
their genius might excite. By Campbell, the high-souled 
and silver-tongued, and by Hook, from whom jest, and 
whim, and humour, flowed in so free and riotous a wave, 
that books confined and narrowed away the stream ; to 
read Hook is to wrong him. 

Nor can we think of your predecessors without remem- 
bering your rival, Hood, who, as the tree puts forth the 
most exuberant blossoms the year before its decay, showed 
the bloom and promise of his genius most when the worm 
was at the trunk. To us behind the scenes, to us who 
knew the men, how melancholy the contrast between the 
fresh and youthful intellect, the worn-out and broken 
frame ; for, despite what I have seen written, Campbell 
when taken at the right moment, was Campbell ever. ISTot 
capable, indeed, towards the last, of the same exertion, 
if manifested by those poor evidences of what is in us, that 
books parade, but still as powerful in his great and noble 
thoughts, in the oral poetry revealed by flashes and winged 
words, though unrounded into form. 

And Hook jested on the bed of death, as none but he 
could jest. And Hood ! who remembers not the tender 
pathos, the exquisite humanity, which spoke forth from his 
darkened room ? Alas ! what prolonged pangs, what heavy 
lassitude, what death in life did these men endure ! 

Here we are, Mr. Editor, in these days of cant and 
jargon, preaching up the education of the mind, forcing 
our children under melon-frames, and babbling to the 
labourer and mechanic, " Read, and read, and read," as if 
God had not given us muscles, and nerves, and bodies, 
subjected to exquisite pains as pleasures — as if the body 
were not to be cared for and cultivated as well as the 
mind ; as if health were no blessing instead of that capital 
good, without which all other blessings — save the hope of 
health eternal — grow flat and joyless ; as if the enjoyment 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 51 

of tlie world in which we are, was not far more closely 
linked with our physical than our mental selves ; as if we 
were better than maimed and imperfect men ; so long as 
our nerves are jaded and prostrate, our senses dim and 
heavy, our relationship with Nature abridged and thwarted 
by the jaundiced eye, and failing limb, and trembling hand 
■ — the apothecary's shop between us and the sun ! 

For the mind, we admit, that to render it strong ated 
clear, habit and discipline are required ; — how deal we 
(especially we, Mr. Editor, of the London world — we of 
the literary craft — we of the restless, striving brotherhood) 
— how deal we with the body ? We carry it on with us, 
as a post-horse, from stage to stage — does it flag ? no rest ! 
give it ale or the spur. We begin to feel the frame break 
under us ; — we administer a drug, gain a temporary relief, 
shift the disorder from one part to another — forget our 
ailments in our excitemeuts, and when we pause at last, 
thoroughly shattered, with complaints grown chronic, 
diseases fastening to the organs, send for the doctors in 
good earnest, and die as your predecessors and your rival 
died, under combinations of long-neglected maladies, which 
could never have been known had we done for the body 
what we do for the mind — made it strong by discipline, 
and maintained it firm by habit. 

Not alone calling to recollection our departed friends, 
but looking over the vast field of suffering which those 
acquainted with the lives of men who think and labour 
cannot fail to behold around them, I confess, though I have 
something of Canning's disdain of professed philanthropists, 
and do not love every knife-grinder as much as if he were my 
brother — I confess, nevertheless, that I am filled with an ear- 
nest pity ; and an anxious desire seizes me to communicate 
to others that simple process of healing and well being which 
has passed under my own experience, and to which I grate- 
fully owe days no longer weary of the sun, and nights 
which no longer yearn for and yet dread the morrow. 

And now, Mr. Editor, I may be pardoned, I trust, if I 
illustrate by my own case the system I commend to others. 

I have been a workman in my day. I began to write 
and to toil, and to win some kind of a name, which I had 
the ambition to improve, while yet little more than a boy. 
With a strong love for study of books — with yet greater 

e 2 



52 CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 

desire to accomplish myself in the knowledge of men, for 
sixteen years I can conceive no life to have been more filled 
by occupation than mine. What time was not given to 
action was given to study ; what time not given to study, 
to action — labour in both ! To a constitution naturally far 
from strong, I allowed no pause nor respite. The wear and 
tear went on without intermission — the whirl of the wheel 
never ceased. 

Sometimes, indeed, thoroughly overpowered and ex- 
hausted, I sought for escape. The physicians said, 
" Travel," and I travelled. " Go into the country," and I 
went. But at such attempts at repose all my ailments 
gathered round me — made themselves far more palpable 
and felt. I had no resource but to fly from myself — to fly 
into the other world of books, or thought, or reverie — to 
live in some state of being less painful than my own. As 
long as I was always at work it seemed that I had no leisure 
to be ill. Quiet was my hell. 

At length the frame thus long neglected — patched up for 
awhile by drugs and doctors — put off and trifled with as 
an intrusive dun — like a dun who is in his rights — brought 
in its arrears — crushing and terrible — accumulated through 
long years. Worn out and wasted, the constitution seemed 
wholly inadequate to meet the demand. 

The exhaustion of toil and study had been completed by 
great anxiety and grief. I had watched with alternate 
hope and fear the lingering and mournful death-bed of my 
nearest relation and dearest friend — of the person around 
whom was entwined the strongest affection my life had 
known — and when all was over, I seemed scarcely to live 
myself. 

At this time, about the January of 1844, 1 was thoroughly 
shattered. The least attempt at exercise exhausted me. 
The nerves gave way at the most ordinary excitement — a 
chronic irritation of that vast surface we call the mucous 
membrane, which had defied for years all medical skill, 
rendered me continually liable to acute attacks, which from 
their repetition, and the increased feebleness of my frame, 
might at any time be fatal. Though free from any organic 
disease of the heart, its action was morbidly restless and 
painful. My sleep was without refreshment. At morning 
I rose more weary than I laid down to rest. 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER -PATIENT. 53 

Without fatiguing you and your readers further with 
the long a coliors of my complaints, I pass on to record my 
struggle to resist them. I have always had a great belief 
in the power of will. What a man determines to do — that 
in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred I hold that he 
succeeds in doing. I determined to have some insight into 
a knowledge I had never attained since manhood — the 
knowledge of health. 

I resolutely put away books and study, sought the airs 
which the physicians esteemed most healthful, and adopted 
the strict regimen on which all the children of Esculapius 
so wisely insist. In short, I maintained the same general 
habits as to hours, diet (with the exception of wine, which 
in moderate quantities seemed to me indispensable), and, 
so far as my strength would allow, of exercise, as I found 
afterwards instituted at hydropathic establishments. 

I dwell on this to forestall in some degree the common 
remark of persons not well acquainted with the medical 
agencies of water — that it is to the regular life which 
water-patients lead, and not to the element itself that they 
owe their recovery. Nevertheless I found that these 
changes, however salutary in theory, produced little, if any, 
practical amelioration in my health. 

All invalids know, perhaps, how difficult, under ordinary 
circumstances, is the alteration of habits from bad to good. 
The early rising, the walk before breakfast, so delicious in 
the feelings of freshness and vigour which they bestow 
upon the strong, often become punishments to the valetu- 
dinarian. Headache, langour, a sense of weariness over 
the eyes, a sinking of the whole system towards noon, 
which seemed imperiously to demand the dangerous aid of 
stimulants, were all that I obtained by the morning breeze 
and the languid stroll by the sea-shore. 

The suspension from study only afflicted me with intole- 
rable ennui, and added to the profound dejection of the 
spirits. The brain, so long accustomed to morbid activity, 
was but withdrawn from its usual occupations to invent 
horrors and chimeras. Over the pillow, vainly sought two 
hours before midnight, hovered no golden sleep. The 
absence of excitement, however unhealthy, only aggravated 
the symptoms of ill-health. 

It was at this time that I met by chance, in the library 



54 CONFESSIONS OF A WATEK-PATIENT. 

at St. Leonard's, with Captain Claridge's work on the 
" Water Cure," as practised bj Priessnitz, at Graafenberg. 
Making allowance for certain exaggerations therein, which 
appeared evident to my common sense, enough still re- 
mained not only to captivate the imagination and flatter 
the hopes of an invalid, but to appeal with favour to his 
sober judgment. 

Till then, perfectly ignorant of the subject and the 
system, except by some such vague stories and good jests 
as had reached my ears in Germany, I resolved at least to 
read what more could be said in favour of the ariston 
udor, and examine dispassionately into its merits as a medi- 
cament. 

I was then under the advice of one of the first physicians 
of our age. I had consulted half the faculty. I had every 
reason to be grateful for the attention, and to be confident 
in the skill of those whose prescriptions had, from time to 
time, flattered my hopes and enriched the chemist. But 
the truth must be spoken — far from being better, I was 
sinking fast. Little remained to me to try in the great 
volume of the herbal. Seek what I would next, even if a 
quackery, it certainly might expedite my grave, but it 
could scarcely render life — at least the external life — more 
un joyous. 

Accordingly I examined, with such grave thought as a 
sick man brings to bear upon his case, all the grounds upon 
which to justify to myself an excursion to the snows of 
Silesia. But I own that in proportion as I found my faith 
in the system strengthen, I shrunk from the terrors of this 
long journey to the rugged region in which the probable 
lodging would be a labourer's cottage,^ and in which the 
Babel of a hundred languages (so agreeable to the health- 
ful delight in novelty — so appalling to the sickly despond- 
ency of a hypochondriac), would murmur and growl over 
a public table spread with no tempting condiments. 

Could I hope to find healing in my own land, and not too 
far from my own doctors in case of failure, I might indeed 

* Let me not disparage the fountain head of the water-cure, the parent 
institution of the great Preissnitz. I believe many of the earlier hardships 
complained of at Graafenberg have been removed or amended ; and such as 
remain, are no doubt well compensated by the vast experience and extra- 
ordinary tact of a man who will rank hereafter amongst the most illustrious 
discoverers who have ever benefited the human race. 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 55 

solicit the watery gods — but the journey. I who scarcely 
lived through a day without leech or potion ! — the long — 
gelid journey to Graafenberg — I should be sure to fall ill 
by the way — to be clutched and mismanaged by some Ger- 
man doctor —to deposit my bones in some dismal church- 
yard on the banks of Father "Rhine. 

While thus perplexed, I fell in with one of the pamphlets 
written by Doctor Wilson, of Malvern, and my doubts 
were solved. Here was an English doctor, who had him- 
self known more than my own sufferings, who, like myself, 
had found the pharmacopoeia in vain — who had spent ten 
months at Grraafenberg, and left all his complaints behind 
him — who, fraught with the experience he had acquired, 
not only in his own person, but from scientific examination 
of the cases under his eye, had transported the system to 
our native shores, and who proffered the proverbial salu- 
brity of Malvern air and its holy springs, to those who, 
like me, had ranged in vain from simple to mineral, and 
who had become bold by despair — bold enough to try if 
health, like truth, lay at the bottom of a well. 

I was not then aware that other institutions had been 
established in England of more or less fame. I saw in 
Doctor Wilson the first transporter — at least as a physician 
— of the Silesian system, and did not care to look out for 
other and later pupils of this innovating German school. 

I resolved then to betake myself to Malvern. On my 
way through town I paused, in the innocence of my heart, 
to inquire of some of the faculty if they thought the 
water-cure would suit my case. With one exception, they 
were unanimous in the vehemence of their denunciations. 

Granting even that in some cases, especially of rheuma- 
tism, hydropathy had produced a cure, to my complaints 
it was worse than inapplicable — it was highly dangerous — 
it would probably be fatal. I had not stamina for the 
treatment — it would fix chronic ailments into organic 
disease — surely it would be much better to try what I had 
not yet tried. 

What had I not yet tried ? A course of prussic acid ! 
Nothing was better for gastrite irritation, which was no 
doubt the main cause of my suffering ! If, however, I 
were obstinately bent upon so mad an experiment, Doctor 
Wilson was the last person I should go to. I was not 



56 CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 

deterred by all these intimidations, nor seduced by the 
salubrious allurements of the prussic acid under its scien- 
tific appellation of hydrocyanic. 

A little reflection taught me that the members of a 
learned profession are naturally the very persons least dis- 
posed to favour innovation upon the practices which cus- 
tom and prescription have rendered sacred in their eyes. 
A lawyer is not the person to consult upon bold reforms in 
jurisprudence. A physician can scarcely be expected to 
own that a Silesian peasant will cure with water the dis- 
eases which resist an armament of phials. And with re- 
gard to the peculiar objections to Doctor Wilson, T had read 
in his own pamphlet attacks upon the orthodox practice 
sufficient to account for — perhaps to justify — the disposition 
to depreciate him in return. 

Still my friends were anxious and fearful ; to please them 
I continued to inquire, though not of physicians, but of 
patients. I sought out some of those who had gone 
through the process. I sifted some of the cases of cure 
cited by Doctor Wilson. I found the account of the patients 
so encouraging, the cases quoted so authentic, that I grew 
impatient of the delay. I threw physic to the dogs, and 
went to Malvern. 

It is not my intention, Mr. Editor, to detail the course I 
underwent. The different resources of water as a medica- 
ment are to be found in many works easily to be obtained,* 
and well worth the study. In this letter I suppose myself 
to be addressing those as thoroughly unacquainted with the 
system as I was myself at the first, and I deal, therefore, 
only in generals. 

The first point which impressed and struck me was the 
extreme and utter innocence of the water-cure in skilful 
hands — in any hands, indeed, not thoroughly new to the 
system. Certainly when I went, I believed it to be a kill 
or cure system. I fancied it must be a very violent remedy 
— that it doubtless might effect great and magical cures — 
but that if it failed, it might be fatal. 

Now, I speak not alone of my own case, but of the im- 
mense number of cases I have seen — patients of all ages — 
all species and genera of disease — all kinds and conditions 

* The works of Drs. Johnson, (of Stansted-Beriy,) Weiss, Wilson, Gully, 
&c., as well as that of Capt. Claridge. 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 57 

of constitution, when I declare, upon my honour, that I 
never witnessed one dangerous symptom produced by the 
water-cure, whether at Doctor Wilson's or the other hy- 
dropathic institutions which I afterwards visited. 

And though unquestionably fatal consequences might 
occur from gross mismanagement, and as unquestionably 
have so occurred at various establishments, I am yet con- 
vinced that water in itself is so friendly to the human body, 
that it requires a very extraordinary degree of bungling, 
of ignorance, and presumption, to produce results really 
dangerous ; that a regular practitioner does more frequent 
mischief from the misapplication of even the simplest 
drugs, than a water doctor of very moderate experience 
does or can do, by the misapplication of his baths and 
friction. 

And here I must observe, that those portions of the 
treatment which appear to the uninitiated as the most 
perilous are really the safest,* and can be applied with the 
most impunity to the weakest constitutions ; whereas those 
which appear, from our greater familiarity with them, the 
least startling and most innocuous,t are those which require 
the greatest knowledge of general pathology and the indi- 
vidual constitution. I shall revert to this part of my 
subject before T conclude. 

The next thing that struck me was the extraordinary ease 
with which, under this system, good habits are acquired, 
and bad habits relinquished. The difficulty with which, 
under orthodox medical treatment, stimulants are aban- 
doned, is here not witnessed. 

Patients accustomed for half a century to live hard and 
high, wine- drinkers, spirit-bibbers, whom the regular phy- 
sician has sought in vain to reduce to a daily pint of sherry, 
here voluntarily resign all strong potations, after a day or 
two cease to feel the want of them, and reconcile them- 
selves to water as if they had drunk nothing else all their 
lives. Others, who have had recourse for years and years 
to medicine, — their potion in the morning, their cordial at 
noon, their pill before dinner, their narcotic at bedtime, 
cease to require these aids to life, as if by a charm. 

Nor this alone. Men to whom mental labour has been 

* Such as the wet-sheet packing, 
f The plunge-bath — the Douche. 



58 CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 

a necessary — who have existed on the excitement of the 
passions and the stir of the intellect— who have felt, these 
withdrawn, the prostration of the whole system — the lock 
to the wheel of the entire machine — return at once to the 
careless spirits of the boy in his first holiday. 

Here lies a great secret ; water thus skilfully adminis- 
tered is in itself a wonderful excitement, it supplies the 
place of all others — it operates powerfully and rapidly 
upon the nerves, sometimes to calm them, sometimes to 
irritate, but always to occupy. 

Hence follows a consequence which all patients have re- 
marked — the complete repose of the passions during the 
early stages of the cure ; they seem laid asleep as if by 
enchantment. The intellect shares the same rest ; after a 
short time, mental exertion becomes impossible ; even the 
memory grows far less tenacious of its painful impressions, 
cares and griefs are forgotten ; the sense of the present 
absorbs the past and future ; there is a certain freshness of 
youth which pervades the spirits, and lives upon the enjoy- 
ment of the actual hour. 

Thus the great agents of our mortal wear and tear — the 
passions and the mind — calmed into strange rest, — Nature 
seems to leave the body to its instinctive tendency, which 
is always towards recovery. All that interests and amuses 
is of a healthful character ; exercise, instead of being an 
unwilling drudgery, becomes the inevitable impulse of the 
frame braced and invigorated by the element. A series of 
reactions is continually going on — the willing exercise pro- 
duces refreshing rest, the refreshing rest willing exercise. 

The extraordinary effect which water taken early in the 
morning produces on the appetite is well known amongst 
those who have tried it, even before the water-cure was 
thought of ; an appetite it should be the care of the skilful 
doctor to check into moderate gratification ; the powers of 
nutrition become singularly strengthened, the blood grows 
rich and pure— the constitution is not only amended — it 
undergoes a change.* 

* Doctor Wilson observed to me once, very truly I think, that many regular 
physicians are beginning to own the effect of water as a stimulant who yet 
do not perceive its far more complicated and beneficial effects as an altera- 
tive. I may here remark, that eminent physicians are already borrowing 
largely from the details of the water-cure— recommending water "to be drunk 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 59 

The safety of the system, then, struck me first; — its 
power of replacing by healthful stimulants the morbid 
ones it withdrew, whether physical or moral, surprised me 
next ; that which thirdly impressed me was no less con- 
trary to all my preconceived notions. I had fancied that 
whether good or bad, the treatment must be one of great 
hardship, extremely repugnant and disagreeable. I won- 
dered at myself to find how soon it became so associated 
with pleasurable and grateful feelings as to dwell upon the 
mind amongst the happiest passages of existence. 

For my own part, despite all my ailments, or whatever 
may have been my cares, I have ever found exquisite pleasure 
in that sense of being which is, as it were, the conscience, 
the mirror, of the soul. I have known hours of as much 
and as vivid happiness as perhaps can fall to the lot of 
man ; but amongst all my most brilliant recollections I can 
recall no periods of enjoyment at once more hilarious and 
serene than the hours spent on the lonely hills of Malvern 
— none in which nature was so thoroughly possessed and 
appreciated. 

The rise from a sleep sound as childhood's — the im- 
patient rush into the open air, while the sun was fresh, and 
the birds first sang — the sense of an unwonted strength in 
every limb and nerve, which made so light of the steep 
ascent to the holy spring — the delicious sparkle of that 
morning draught — the green terrace on the brow of the 
mountain, with the rich landscape wide and far below — the 
breeze that once would have been so keen and biting, now 
but exhilarating the blood, and lifting the spirits into 
religious joy ; and this keen sentiment of present pleasure 
rounded by a hope sanctioned by all I felt in myself, and 
nearly all that I witnessed in others — that that very present 
was but the step — the threshold — into an unknown and 
delightful region of health and vigour ; — a disease and a 
care dropping from the frame and the heart at every stride. 

But here I must pause to own that if on the one hand 
the danger and discomforts of the cure are greatly ex- 
fasting— the use of the sitz, or hip-bath, &c. But these, however useful as 
aids in the treatment of maladies, cannot comprehend that extraordinary 
alterative which is produced by the various and complicated agencies of 
water, brought systematically, unintermittingly, and for a considerable 
period, to bear, not only upon the complaint, but the constitution. 



CO CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 

aggerated (exaggerated is too weak a word) — so, on the 
other hand, as far as my own experience, which is perhaps 
not inconsiderable, extends, the enthusiastic advocates of 
the system have greatly misrepresented the duration of the 
curative process. I have read and heard of chronic diseases 
of long standing cured permanently in a very few weeks. 
I candidly confess that I have seen none such. I have, it 
is true, witnessed many chronic diseases perfectly cured — 
diseases which had been pronounced incurable by the first 
physicians, but the cure has been long and fluctuating. 

Persons so afflicted who try this system must arm them- 
selves with patience. The first effects of the process are 
indeed usually bracing, and inspire such feelings of general 
well-being, that some think they have only to returrfhome, 
and carry out the cure partially, to recover. A great 
mistake! — the alterative effects begin long after the 
bracing — a disturbance in the constitution takes place, 
prolonged more or less, and not till that ceases does the 
cure really begin. 

Not that the peculiar " crisis," sought for so vehemently 
by the German water- doctors, and usually under their 
hands manifested by boils and eruptions, is at all a neces- 
sary part of the cure — it is, indeed, as far as I have seen, 
of rare occurrence — but a critical action, not single, not 
confined to one period, or one series of phenomena, is at 
work, often undetected by the patient himself, during a 
considerable (and that the later) portion of the cure in 
most patients where the malady has been grave, and where 
the recovery becomes permanent. During this time the 
patient should be under the eye of his water-doctor. 

To conclude my own case: I stayed some nine or ten 
weeks at Malvern, and business, from which I could not 
escape, obliging me then to be in the neighbourhood of 
town, I continued the system seven weeks longer under 
Doctor Weiss, at Petersham ; during this latter period the 
agreeable phenomena which had characterised the former, 
the cheerfulness, the Hen etre, the consciousness of return- 
ing health vanished ; and were succeeded by great irrita- 
tion of the nerves, extreme fretfulness, and the usual 
characteristics of the constitutional disturbance to which I 
have referred. I had every reason, however, to be satisfied 
with the care and skill of Doctor Weiss, who fullv deserves 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 61 

the reputation he has acquired, and the attachment enter- 
tained towards him by his patients ; nor did my judgment 
ever despond or doubt of the ultimate benefits of the 
process. 

I emerged at last from these operations in no very portly 
condition. I was blanched and emaciated — washed out 
like a thrifty housewife's gown — but neither the bleaching 
nor the loss of weight had in the least impaired my strength ; 
on the contrary, all the muscles had grown as hard as iron, 
and I was become capable of great exercise without fatigue ; 
my cure was not effected, but I was compelled to go into 
Germany. 

On my return homewards I was seized with a severe 
cold, which rapidly passed into high fever. Fortunately I 
was within reach of Doctor Schmidt's magnificent hydro- 
pathic establishment at Boppart ; thither I caused myself 
to be conveyed ; and now I had occasion to experience the 
wonderful effect of the water-cure in acute cases ; slow in 
chronic disease, its beneficial operation in acute is imme- 
diate. In twenty-four hours all fever had subsided, and on 
the third day I resumed my journey, relieved from every 
symptom that had before prognosticated a tedious and 
perhaps alarming illness. 

And now came gradually, yet perceptibly, the good 
effects of the system I had undergone ; flesh and weight 
returned ; the sense of health became conscious and steady; 
I had every reason to bless the hour when I first sought 
the springs of Malvern. And, here I must observe, that it 
often happens that the patient makes but slight apparent 
improvement, when under the cure, compared with that 
which occurs subsequently. A water-doctor of repute at 
Brussels, indeed, said frankly to a grumbling patient, " I 
do not expect you to be well while here — it is only on 
leaving me that you will know if I have cured you.'' 

It is as the frame recovers from the agitation it under- 
goes, that it gathers round it powers utterly unknown to it 
before— as the plant watered by the rains of one season, 
betrays in the next the effect of the grateful dews. 

I had always suffered so severely in winter, that the 
severity of our last one gave me apprehensions, and I re- 
solved to seek shelter from my fears at my beloved Malvern. 
I here passed the most inclement period of the winter, not 



62 CONFESSIONS OF A WATEK-PATIENT. 

only perfectly free from the colds, rheums, and catarrhs, 
which had hitherto visited me with the snows, but in the 
enjoyment of excellent health ; and I am persuaded that for 
those who are delicate, and who suffer much during the 
winter, there is no place where the cold is so little felt as 
at a water-cure establishment. 

I am persuaded, also, and in this I am borne out by the 
experience of most water-doctors, that the cure is most 
rapid and effectual during the cold season — from autumn 
through the winter. I am thoroughly convinced that con- 
sumption in its earlier stages can be more easily cured, and 
the predisposition more permanently eradicated by a winter 
spent at Malvern, under the care of Doctor Wilson, than 
by the timorous flight to Pisa or Madeira. It is by harden- 
ing rather than defending the tissues that we best secure 
them from disease. 

And now, to sum up, and to dismiss my egotistical re- 
velations ; — I desire in no way to overcolour my own case ; 
I do not say that when I first went to the water-cure I was 
afflicted with any disease immediately menacing to life — I 
say only that I was in that prolonged and chronic state of 
ill-health, which made life at the best extremely precarious 
— I do not say that I had any malady which the faculty 
could pronounce incurable — I say only that the most 
eminent men of the faculty had failed to cure me. I do 
not even now affect to boast of a perfect and complete 
deliverance from all my ailments — I cannot declare that a 
constitution naturally delicate has been rendered Herculean, 
or that the wear and tear of a whole manhood have been 
thoroughly repaired. 

What might have been the case had I not taken the cure 
at intervals, had I remained at it steadily for six or eight 
months without interruption, I cannot do more than con- 
jecture, but so strong is my belief that the result would 
have been completely successful, that I promise myself, 
whenever I can spare the leisure, a long renewal of the 
system. 

These admissions made, what have I gained meanwhile 
to justify my eulogies and my gratitude ? — an immense 
accumulation of the capital of health. Formerly, it was my 
favourite and querulous question to those who saw much of 
me, " Did you ever know me twelve hours without pain or 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. Go 

illness r" Now, instead of these being my constant com- 
panions, they are but my occasional visitors. I compare 
my old state and my present to the poverty of a man who 
has a shilling in his pocket, and whose poverty is therefore 
a struggle for life, with the occasional distresses of a man 
of £5000 a year, who sees but an appendage endangered, 
or a luxury abridged. 

All the good that I have gained, is wholly unlike what I 
have ever derived either from medicine or the German 
mineral baths : in the first place, it does not relieve a single 
malady alone, it pervades the whole frame ; in the second 
place, unless the habits are intemperate, it does not wear 
off as we return to our ordinary pursuits, so that those who 
make fair experiment of the system towards, or even after, 
the season of middle age, may, without exaggeration, find 
in the latter period of life (so far as freedom from suffering, 
and the calm enjoyment of physical being are concerned) a 
second — a younger youth ! And it is this profound con- 
viction which has induced me to volunteer these details, in 
the hope (I trust a pure and kindly one) to induce those, 
who more or less have suffered as I have done, to fly to 
the same rich and bountiful resources. 

We ransack the ends of the earth for drugs and minerals 
— we extract our potions from the deadliest poisons — but 
around us and about us, Nature, the great mother proffers 
the Hygeian fount, unsealed and accessible to all. Wher- 
ever the stream glides pure, wherever the spring sparkles 
fresh, there, for the vast proportion of the maladies which 
Art produces, Nature yields the benignant healing. 

It remains for me to say, merely as an observer, and 
solely with such authority as an observer altogether disin- 
terested, but, of course, without the least pretence to profes- 
sional science, may fairly claim, what class of diseases I have 
seen least, and what most, tractable to the operations of the 
water-cure, and how far enthusiasts appear to me to have 
over-estimated, how far sceptics have under- valued the 
effects of water as a medicament. 

There are those (most of the water doctors especially) 
who contend that all medicine by drugs is unnecessary — 
that water internally and outwardly applied suffices, under 
skilful management, for all complaints— that the time will 
come when the drug doctor will cease to receive a fee, when 



64 CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 

the apothecary will close his shop, and the water-cure be 
adopted in every hospital and by every family. 

Dreams and absurdities ! Even granting that the water- 
cure were capable of all the wonders ascribed to it, its 
process is so slow in most chronic cases — it usually requires 
such complete abstraction from care and business — it takes 
the active man so thoroughly out of his course of life, 
that a vast proportion of those engaged in worldly pursuits 
cannot hope to find the requisite leisure, There are also a 
large number of complaints (perhaps the majority) which 
yield so easily to a sparing use of drugs under a mode- 
rately competent practitioner, that the convenient plan of 
sending to the next chemist for your pill or potion can 
never be superseded, nor can I think it desirable that it 
should be. Moreover, as far as I have seen, there are 
complaints curable by medicine which the water-cure 
utterly fails to reach. 

The disorders wherein hydropathy appears to me to be 
the least effectual are, first, neuralgic pains, especially the 
monster pain of the Tic Doloreux. Not one instance of a 
cure in the latter by hydropathy has come under my own ob- 
servation, and I have only heard of one authentic case of 
recovery from it by that process. Secondly, paralysis of a 
grave character in persons of an advanced age. Thirdly, 
in tubercular consumption. As may be expected, in this 
stage of that melancholy disease, the water-cure utterly 
fails to restore, but I have known it even here prolong life, 
beyond all reasonable calculation, and astonishingly relieve 
the more oppressive symptoms. 

In all cases where the nervous exhaustion is great, and 
of long standing, and is accompanied with obstinate hy- 
pochondria ; hydropathy, if successful at all, is very slow 
in its benefits, and the patience of the sufferer is too often 
worn out before the favourable turn takes place. I have also 
noticed that obstinate and deep-rooted maladies in persons 
otherwise of very athletic frames seem to yield much more 
tardily to the water-cure than similar complaints in more 
delicate constitutions ; so that you will often see, of two 
persons afflicted with the same genera of complaints, the 
feeble and fragile one recover before the stout man with 
Atlantic shoulders evinces one symptom of amelioration. 
I must add, too, generally, that where the complaint is not 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 65 

functional, but clearly organic, I should deceive the patient 
if I could bid him hope from water more than what drugs 
may effect — viz., palliatives and relief. But medical 
science is not always unerring in its decisions on organic 
complaints, and many that have been pronounced to be 
such, yield to the searching and all penetrating influences 
of water. 

Those cases, on the other hand, in which the water-cure 
seems an absolute panacea, and in which the patient may 
commence with the most sanguine hopes, are, First, rheu- 
matism, however prolonged, however complicated. In this 
the cure is usually rapid — nearly always permament. 
Secondly, gout. 

Here its efficacy is little less startling to appearance than 
in the former case ; it seems to take up the disease by the 
roots ; it extracts the peculiar acid, which often appears in 
discolorations upon the sheets used in the application, or 
is ejected ill other modes. Bat here, judging always from 
cases subjected to my personal knowledge, I have not seen 
instances to justify the assertion of some water doctors 
that returns of the disease do not occur. The predisposi- 
tion — the tendency, has appeared to me to remain. The 
patient is liable to relapses — but T have invariably found 
them far less frequent, less lengthened, and readily sus- 
ceptible of simple and speedy cure, especially if the habits 
remain temperate. 

Thirdly, that wide and grisly family of affliction classed 
under the common name of dyspepsia. All derangements 
of the digestive organs, imperfect powers of nutrition — 
the malaise of an injured stomach, appear precisely the 
complaints on which the system takes firmest hold, and in 
which it effects those cures that convert existence from a 
burden into a blessing. 

Hence it follows that many nameless and countless com- 
plaints proceeding from derangement of the stomach, cease 
as that great machine is restored to order. I have seen 
disorders of the heart which have been pronounced organic 
by no inferior authorities of the profession, disappear in 
an incredibly short time — cases of incipient consumption, 
in which the seat is in the nutritious powers ; hemorrhages, 
and various congestions, shortness of breath, habitual 
fainting-fits, many of what are call act improperly nervous 



66 CONFESSIONS OF A WATER- PATIENT. 

complaints, but which, in reality, are radiations from the 
main ganglionic spring ; the disorders produced by the 
abuse of powerful medicines, especially mercury and iodine, 
the loss of appetite, the dulled sense, and the shaking hand 
of intemperance, skin complaints, and the dire scourge of 
scrofula — all these seem to obtain from hydropathy relief 
— nay, absolute and unqualified cure, beyond not only the 
means of the most skilful drug doctor, but the hopes of 
the most sanguine patient.^ 

The cure may be divided into two branches — the process 
for acute complaints — that for chronic ; I have just referred 
to the last. - And great as are there its benefits, they seem 
commonplace beside the effect the system produces in 
acute complaints. Fever, including the scarlet and the 
typhus, influenza, measles, small-pox, the sudden and rapid 
disorders of children, are cured with a simplicity and pre- 
cision which must, I am persuaded, sooner or later, render 
the resources of the hydropathist the ordinary treatment 
for such acute complaints in the hospitals. 

The principal remedy here employed by the water-doctor 
is the wet- sheet packing, which excites such terror amongst 
the uninitiated, and which, of all the curatives adopted by 
hydropathy, is unquestionably the safest — the one that can 
be applied without danger to the greatest variety of cases, 
and which I do not hesitate to aver can rarely, if ever, 
be misapplied in any cases where the pulse is hard and 
high, and the skin dry and burning. 

I have found in conversation so much misapprehension 
of this very easy and very luxurious remedy, that I may 
be pardoned for re- explaining what has been explained so 
often. It is not, as people persist in supposing, that 
patients are put into wet sheets and there left to shiver. 
The sheets, after being saturated, are well wrung out — 
the patient quickly wrapped in them — several blankets 
tightly bandaged round, and a feather-bed placed at top ; 

* Amongst other complaints, I may add dropsy, which, in its simple state, 
and not as the crowning symptom of a worn-out constitution, I have known 
most successfully treated ; cases of slight paralysis ; and I have witnessed two 
instances of partial blindness, in which the sight was restored. I have never 
seen deafness cured by hydropathy, though I believe that one of the best 
German treatises on the water Cure, at Graafenberg, was written by a Prus- 
sian officer, whom Preissnitz relieved from that not least cheerless of human 
infirmities. 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 67 

thus, especially where there is the least fever, the first 
momentary chill is ]3romptly succeeded by a gradual and 
vivifying warmth, perfectly free from the irritation of 
dry heat — a delicious sense of ease is usually followed by 
sleep more agreeable than anodynes ever produced. It 
seems a positive cruelty to be relieved from this magic 
girdle in which pain is lulled and fever cooled, and watch- 
fulness lapped in slumber. 

The bath which succeeds, refreshes and braces the skin, 
which the operation relaxed and softened. They only who 
have tried this, after fatigue or in fever, can form the least 
notion of its pleasurable sensations, or of its extraordinary 
efficacy; nor is there anything startling or novel in its 
theory. 

In hospitals, now, water- dressings are found the best 
poultice to an inflamed member ; this expansion of the wet 
dressing is a poultice to the whole inflamed surface of the 
body. It does not differ greatly, except in its cleanliness 
and simplicity, from the old remedy of the ancients — the 
wrapping the body in the skins of animals newly slain, or 
placing it on dunghills, or immersing it, as now in Ger- 
many, in the soft slough of mud-baths. # Its theory is 
that of warmth and moisture, those friendliest agents to 
inflammatory disorders. 

In fact, I think it the duty of every man, on whom the 
lives of others depend, to make himself acquainted with 
at least this part of the water-cure : — the wet sheet is the 
true life-preserver. In the large majority of sudden in- 
flammatory complaints, the doctor at a distance, prompt 
measures indispensable, it will at the least arrest the disease, 
check the fever, till, if you prefer the drugs, the drugs can 
come — the remedy is at hand wherever you can find a bed 
and a jug of water ; and whatever else you may apprehend 
after a short visit to a hydropathic establishment, your fear 
of that bugbear — the wet sheet — is the first you banish. 

The only cases, I believe, where it can be positively mis- 
chievous is where the pulse scarcely beats — where the vital 

* A very eminent London physician, opposed generally to the water-cure, 
told me that he had effected a perfect cure in a case of inveterate leprosy, 
hy swathing the patient in wet lint covered with oil skin. This is the wet 
sheet packing, hut there are patients who would take kindly to wet lint, and 
shudder at the idea of a wet sheet ! 



68 CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 

sense is extremely low — where the inanition of the frame 
forbids the necessary reaction; — in cholera, and certain 
disorders of the chest and bronchia ; otherwise at all ages, 
from the infant to the octogenarian, it is equally applicable, 
and in most acute cases, equally innocent. 

Hydropathy being thus rapidly beneficial in acute dis- 
orders, it follows naturally that it will be quick as a cure in 
chronic complaints in proportion as acute symptoms are 
mixed with them, and slowest where such complaints are 
dull and lethargic — it will be slowest also where the nervous 
exhaustion is the greatest. With children, its effects can 
scarcely be exaggerated ; in them, the nervous system, not 
weakened by toil, grief, anxiety, and intemperance, lends 
itself to the gracious element as a young plant to the 
rains. 

When I now see some tender mother coddling, and physick- 
ing, and preserving from every breath of air, and swaddling 
in flannels, her pallid little ones, I long to pounce upon the 
callow brood, and bear them to the hills of Malvern, and 
the diamond fountain of St. Anne's — with what rosy faces 
and robust limbs I promise they shall return — alas ! I 
promise and preach in vain — the family apothecary is 
against me, and the progeny are doomed to rhubarb and 
the rickets. 

The water-cure as yet has had this evident injustice, — the 
patients resorting to it have mostly been desperate cases. 
So strong a notion prevails that it is a desperate remedy, 
that they only who have found all else fail have dragged 
themselves to the Bethesda Pools. That all thus not only 
abandoned by hope and the College, but weakened and 
poisoned by the violent medicines absorbed into their system 
for a score or so of years, — that all should not recover is 
not surprising ! 

The wonder is that the number of recoveries should be 
so great ; — that every now and then we should be surprised 
by the man whose untimely grave we predicted when we 
last saw him meeting us in the streets ruddy and stalwart, 
fresh from the springs of Graaf enberg, Boppart, Petersham, 
or Malvern. 

The remedy is not desperate ; it is simpler, I do not say 
than any dose, but than any course of medicine — it is infi- 
nitely more agreeable — it admits no remedies for the com- 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 69 

plaints which are inimical to the constitution. It bequeaths 
none of the maladies consequent on blue pill and mercury 
— on purgatives and drastics — on iodine and aconite — on 
leeches and the lancet. If it cures your complaint, it will 
assuredly strengthen your whole frame ; if it fails to cure 
your complaint, it can scarcely fail to improve your general 
system. 

As it acts, or ought, scientifically treated, to act, first on 
the system, lastly on the complaint, placing nature herself 
in the way to throw off the disease, so it constantly hap- 
pens that the patients at a hydropathic establishment will 
tell you that the disorder for which they came is not re- 
moved, but that in all other respects their health is better 
than they ever remember it to have been. 

Thus, I would not only recommend it to those who are 
sufferers from some grave disease, but to those who require 
merely the fillip, the alterative, or the bracing which they 
now often seek in vain in country air or a watering place. 
For such, three weeks at Malvern will do more than three 
months at Brighton or Boulogne ; for at the water-cure the 
whole life is one remedy ; the hours, the habits, the dis- 
cipline — not incompatible with gaiety and cheerfulness 
(the spirits of hydropathists are astounding, and in high 
spirits all things are amusement) tend perforce to train the 
body to the highest state of health of which it is capable. 

Compare this life, merchant, trader, man of busi- 
ness, escaping to the sea- shore, with that which you there 
lead — with your shrimps and your shell -fish, and your 
wine and your brown stout — with all which counteracts in 
the evening, the good of your morning dip and your noon- 
day stroll. 

What, I own, I should envy most, are the feelings of the 
robust, healthy man, only a little knocked down by his city 
cares or his town pleasures, after his second week at Dr. 
Wilson's establishment — yea, how I should envy the exqui- 
site pleasure which he would derive from that robustness 
made clear and sensible to him ; — the pure taste, the iron 
muscles, the exuberant spirits, the overflowing sense of life. 

If even to the weak and languid the water-cure gives 
hours of physical happiness which the pleasures of the 
grosser senses can never bestow, what would it give to the 
strong man, from whose eye it has but to lift the light film 



70 CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 

— in whose mechanism, attuned to joy, it but brushes away 
the grain of dust, or oils the solid wheel ! 

I must bring my letter to a close. I meant to address it 
through you, Mr. Editor, chiefly to our brethern — the over- 
jaded sons of toil and letters — behind whom I see the 
warning shades of departed martyrs. But it is applicable 
to all who ail — to all who would not only cure a complaint, 
but strengthen a system and prolong a life. 

To such, who will so far attach value to my authority, 
that they will acknowledge, at least, I am no interested 
witness — for I have no institution to establish — no pro- 
fession to build up — I have no eye to fees, my calling is 
but that of an observer — as an observer only do I speak, it 
may be with enthusiasm — but enthusiasm built on expe- 
rience and prompted by sympathy ; — to such, then, as may 
listen to me, I give this recommendation : pause if you 
please — inquire if you will — but do not consult your doctor. 
I have no doubt he is a most honest, excellent man — but 
you cannot expect a doctor of drugs to say other than that 
doctors of water are but quacks. 

Do not consult your doctor whether you shall try hydro- 
pathy, but find out some intelligent persons in whose 
shrewdness you can confide — who have been patients 
themselves at a hydropathic establishment. Better still, go 
for a few days — the cost is not much — into some such in- 
stitution yourself, look round, talk to the patients, examine 
with your own eyes, hear with your own ears, before you 
adventure the experiment. Become a witness before you 
are a patient ; if the evidence does not satisfy you, turn 
and flee. 

But if you venture, venture with a good heart and a 
stout faith. Hope, but not with presumption. Do not 
fancy that the disorder which has afflicted you for ten 
years ought to be cured in ten clays. Beware, above all, 
lest, alarmed by some phenomena which the searching ele- 
ment produces, you have recourse immediately to drugs to 
disperse them. The water-boils, for instance, which are 
sometimes, as I have before said, but by no means fre- 
quently, a critical symptom of the cure, are, in all cases that 
I have seen, cured easily by water, but may become 
extremely dangerous in the hands of your apothecary.* 
* I have no prejudice, as I have before implied, against the use of drugs, 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 71 

Most of the few solitary instances that have terminated 
fatally, to the prejudice of the water-cure, have been those 
in which the patient has gone from water to drugs. It is 
the axiom of the system, that water only cures what water 
produces. Do not leave a hydropathic establishment in 
the time of any " crisis," however much you may be panic- 
stricken. Hold the doctor responsible for getting you out 
of what he gets you into ; and if your doctor be discreetly 
chosen, take my word he will do it. 

Do not begin to carry on the system at home, and under 
any eye but that of an experienced hydropathist. After 
you know the system, and the doctor knows you, the 
curative process may probably be continued at your own 
house with ease — but the commencement must be watched, 
and if a critical action ensues when you are at home, 
return to the only care that can conduct it safely to a happy 
issue. 

When at the institution, do not let the example of other 
patients tempt you to overdo — to drink more water, or take 
more baths than are prescribed to you. Above all, never 
let the eulogies which many will pass upon the douche (the 
popular bath), tempt you to take it on the sly, unknown to 
your adviser. The douche is dangerous when the body is 

though, despite their more merciful and sparing administration during the 
last twenty years, I venture, with such diffidence as becomes oue practised 
upon, not practising, to hint an opinion, that they are still applied more 
frequently than is warranted by their success on the complaint, or their effect 
on the constitution. But I am quite sure that a patient can rarely, with im- 
punity, be at once under a water doctor and a drug doctor ; and that the 
passage from the first to the last, requires the greatest nicety and caution. 
A physician, however skilful, who not only has not witnessed, but is inclined 
to deride that commotion which is produced in the system, especially on the 
nerves, by vigorous hydropathic treatment, can scarcely be aware of its nature 
and extent, nor how frequently medicines, quite innocuous with an ordinary 
patient, may become dangerous, misapplied to one fresh from a long course 
of hydropathy. Dr. "Weeding, of Eyde, it is true, sometimes unites drugs 
with the water-cure. As I never witnessed his treatment, so I can say 
nothing as to its effects. But granting them to be such as to warrant his de- 
parture from hydropathic theory and practice, it is one question whether a 
water-doctor, thoroughly acquainted with his own system, and minutely 
studying its effects on a particular patient, may or not, with advantage, occa- 
sionally administer drugs, and another question, whether a physician, wholly 
unacquainted with the water-cure, can be reasonably expected to deal, from 
his ordinary pathological experience, however great, with the peculiar symp- 
toms produced by a system of which he knows nothing, or with a constitu- 
tion rendered by the same system acutely sensitive to drugs, and in which a 
critical excitement, wholly out of his range of practice is probably at work. 



1% CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 

unprepared — when the heart is affected — when apoplexy- 
may be feared. After you leave the establishment, be slow 
and gradual in your return to all habits that require much 
intellectual labour, or subject you to much nervous harass- 
ment ; be slow, also, in your return to habits that neces- 
sitate late hours. If you drink wine or fermented liquors 
at all, be sparing in your first recurrence to them. Well 
for you if you adhere throughout life to water as your 
ordinary beverage, and make wine but your occasional 
luxury. At all events, let the constitution slowly settle 
back — do not hurry it back — to artifice from Nature. 

For your choice of an establishment you have a wide 
range. Institutions in England are now plentiful, and 
planted in some of the loveliest spots of our island. But 
as I only speak from personal knowledge, I can but here 
depose to such as I have visited. I hear, indeed, a high 
character of Doctor Johnson, of Stansted-Berry, and his 
books show great ability. Much is said in praise of Doctor 
Freeman, of Cheltenham, though his system, in some mea- 
surers at variance with the received notions of hydropathists. 
But of these and many others, perhaps no less worthy of 
confidence — such as the magnificent establishment at Ben 
Rhydding, in Yorkshire ; that at Grasmere, under Doctor 
Stumm ; and that at Ryde, in which Doctor Weeding seeks 
to unite hydropathy with drugs, &c, &c. — I have no expe- 
rience of my own. I have sojourned with advantage at 
Doctor Weiss's, at Petersham ; and for those whose busi- 
ness and avocations oblige them to be near London, his 
very agreeable house proffers many advantages, besides his 
own long practice and great skill. 

To those who wish to try the system abroad, and shrink 
from the long journey to Graafenberg, Dr. Schmidt, at 
Boppart, proffers a princely house, comprising every 
English comfort, amidst the noble scenery of the Rhine, 
and I can bear ready witness to his skill ; but it is natural 
that the place which has for me the most grateful recol- 
lections, should be that where I received the earliest and 
the greatest benefit, viz., Doctor Wilson's, at Malvern ; 
there even the distance from the capital has its advan- 
tages. 

The cure imperatively demands, at least in a large pro- 
portion of cases, abstraction from all the habitual cares of 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 73 

li-fe, and in some the very neighbourhood of London suffices 
to produce restlessness and anxiety. For certain com- 
plaints, especially those of children, and such as are at- 
tended with debility, the air of Malvern is in itself Hygeian. 
The water is immemorially celebrated for its purity — the 
landscape is a perpetual pleasure to the eye — the moun- 
tains furnish the exercise most suited to the cure — "Man 
muss Gebirge haben" "one must have mountains," is the 
saying of Preissnitz. 

All these are powerful auxiliaries, and yet all these are 
subordinate to the diligent, patient care — the minute, un- 
wearied attention — the anxious, unaffected interest, which 
Doctor Wilson manifests to every patient, from the hum- 
blest to the highest, who may be submitted to his care. 
The vast majority of difficult cures which I have witnessed, 
have emanated from his skill. A pupil of the celebrated 
Broussais, his anatomical knowledge is considerable, and 
his tact * in diseases seems intuitive ; he has that pure 
pleasure in his profession that the profits of it seem to be 
almost lost sight of, and having an independence of his 
own, his enthusiasm for the system he pursues is at least 
not based upon any mercenary speculation. I have seen him 
devote the same time and care to those whom his liberal 
heart has led him to treat gratuitously as to the wealthiest 
of his patients, and I mention this less to praise him for 
generosity than to show that he has that earnest faith in 
his own system, which begets an earnest faith in those to 
whom he administers ; in all new experiments, it is a great 
thing to have confidence, not only in the skill, but the 
sincerity, of your adviser. — His treatment is less violent 
and energetic than that in fashion on the continent. If he 
errs, it is on the side of caution, and his theory leads him 
so much towards the restoration of the whole system, that 
the relief of the particular malady will sometimes seem 

* I use the word "tact" advisedly; for I think the medical profession 
will bear me out in the observation, that a certain quality, which I can de- 
scribe by no other word, is as valuable, as it is rare in practice, and often 
makes the precise and scarce describable difference between one physician 
and another. To this Dr. Wilson joins a remarkable acuteness in his pre- 
dictions as to the nature and termination of complaints, which (as no man 
is less a charlatan) he, no doubt, owes in much to his knowledge of the 
human frame, and his careful education as a practitioner, — but towards 
which, I suppose, as in all other gifts, a natural faculty guides the acquired 
experience. 



74 CONCESSIONS OP A WATER-PATIENT. 

tedious in order to prove complete. Hence he inspires in 
those who have had a prolonged experience of his treat- 
ment a great sense of safety and security. For your im- 
patient self, you might sometimes prefer the venture of a 
brisker process — for those in whom you are interested, and 
for whom you are fearful — you would not rjsk a step more 
hurried. 

And since there is no small responsibility in recommend- 
ing any practitioner of a novel school, so it is a comfort Jto 
know that whoever resorts to Doctor Wilson will at least be 
in hands not only practised and skilful, but wary and safe. 
He may fail in doing good, but I never met with a single 
patient who accused him of doing harm. And I cannot 
help adding, that though Mrs. Wilson does not interfere 
with the patients, it must be gratifying to such ladies as 
resort to Malvern to find in her the birth and manners of a 
perfect gentlewoman, and the noiseless solicitude of a heart 
genuinely kind and good ! 

Here then, brothers, afflicted ones, I bid you fare- 
well. I wish you one of the most blessed friendships man 
ever made — the familiar intimacy with Water. Not 
Undine in her virgin existence more sportive and bewitch- 
ing, not Undine in her wedded state more tender and faith- 
ful than the Element of which she is the type. In health 
may you find it the joyous playmate, in sickness the genial 
restorer and soft assuager. Round the healing spring still 
literally dwell the jocund nymphs in whom the Greek 
poetry personified Mirth and Ease. No drink, whether 
compounded of the gums and rosin of the old Falernian, or 
the alcohol and acid of modern wine, gives the animal 
spirits which rejoice the water- drinker. 

Let him who has to go through severe bodily fatigue try 
first whatever — wine, spirits, porter, beer — he may conceive 
most generous and supporting ; let him then go through 
the same toil with no draughts but from the crystal lymph, 
and if he does not acknowledge [that there is no beverage 
which man concocts so strengthening and animating as 
that which Grod pours forth to all the children of nature, I 
throw up my brief. 

Finally, as health depends upon healthful habits, let 
those who desire easily and luxuriously to glide into the 
courses most agreeable to the human frame, to enjoy the 



CONFESSIONS OF A WATER-PATIENT. 75 

morning breeze, to grow epicures in the simple regimen, to 
become cased in armour against the vicissitudes of our 
changeful skies — to feel, and to shake off, light sleep as a 
blessed dew, let them, while the organs are jet sound, and 
the nerves yet unshattered, devote an autumn to the water- 
cure. 

And you, parents ! who, too indolent, too much slaves 
to custom, to endure change for yourselves, to renounce for 
awhile your artificial natures, but who still covet for your 
children hardy constitutions, pure tastes, and abstemious 
habits — who wish to see them grow up with a manly dis- 
dain of luxury — with a vigorous indifference to climate — 
with a full sense of the value of health, not alone for itself, 
but for the powers it elicits, and the virtues with which it 
is intimately connected — the serene, unfretful temper — the 
pleasure in innocent delights — the well-being that, content 
with self, expands in benevolence to others — you I adjure 
not to scorn the facile process of which I solicit the experi- 
ment. Dip your young heroes in the spring, and hold 
them not back by the heel. May my exhortations find 
believing listeners, and may some, now unknown to me, 
write me word from the green hills of Malvern, or the 
groves of Petersham, "We have hearkened to you — not in 
vain." 

Adieu, Mr. Editor, the ghost returns to silence. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, Esq.* 



" Et itECKEAVERUNT vitam, legesque rogarunt." f 

Lucuet. 1. yi. 3. 



LETTER I. 



Dear and Respected John, — Although I deeply sympa- 
thise with your natural vexation at the troubled state of 
your Town Household in Downing Street, and although at 
other times, I might have much to say upon the disorders 
of that establishment, yet at this moment your rural affairs 
appear to me in a condition so bad and unpromising, as to 
claim all the attention which you can spare from your just 
quarrel with the Pope, and your hospitalities to the strangers 
you have invited to your Barmecide's feast on the banks of 
the Serpentine. 

I bear no ill-will, my dear John, to your present servants, 
they are horrible plagues to you, it is true, — but servants 
always are. I believe many of them to be extremely in- 
telligent, — I am sure that they are as honest as day. All 
they want is a comfortable situation — wages no object. 
And that, somehow or other, the situation is not comfortable, 
seems perfectly clear ; for though they've expressed them- 
selves ready to go, yet, when it comes to the point, nobody 
else appears anxious to step into their shoes. It used not 
to be so, my dear John : I remember the time when you 
could not discharge a servant from Downing Street but 
what his face was as long as my arm, and you had plenty 
to choose from, amongst applicants who were thoroughly 
up to their business. 

For this domestic dilemma of yours, so wounding to your 
pride and destructive to your peace, no doubt there are 
many causes ; but I suspect that the one most serious is 
this — you have allowed your town servants to regulate all 

* [Originally published in 1851 as an 8vo pamphlet.] 

t [And they renewed or remodelled life and secured or established laws.] 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 77 

your country affairs, and they know just as much about 
them as — common sense might have told you ! They have 
thus got the poor land, on which, sooner or later, you are 
doomed to fall back for the expenses of housekeeping, into 
such a deuce of a mess, that I don't wonder they are willing 
to shift to others the task of hearing the complaint, and 
contriving the remedy ; while those who might otherwise 
be disposed to succeed, have the wit to perceive that it will 
be no easy matter to undo what is done, or restore what is 
— undone. For, unhappily, in the dispute so inevitably 
created between your town and country establishments, the 
neighbours of each have been called in to take part in the 
quarrel; and the question is, how to give content to the 
one side, without making the servants' hall too hot to con- 
tain the other. 

This I believe to be the true state of things. And this, 
my dear John, it behoves you to consider with that freedom 
from prejudice and passion which should characterise the 
head of a family when its peace is disturbed by dissensions. 

There drop we the metaphor, and enlarge the scope of 
our views. 

That the existing government cannot last as it is now 
composed, all men seem to admit. We may galvanise the 
lifeless muscles, — we may give to the worn-out frame the 
grimace and convulsion of simulated vitality; but the 
animal spark has fled. We feel that the body is only kept 
above ground for the purpose of philosophical experiment, 
and are quite indifferent to the shocks it receives or the 
gashes inflicted on it, because we say to ourselves, "It is 
a dead thing practised upon for a short time for the sake of 
the living.' ' 

Whether this Government, by some gentle metempsy- 
chosis, shall pass into another much resembling itself, — or 
whether the party it embraces shall rise into vigour and 
power as an antagonistical principle to some Government 
by which my Lord Derby may boldly replace it, — is a 
speculation that I leave to the hopes and the fears of others. 
I shun in these Letters all mere party questions. I stand 
alone from all party. I will not attack the Minister. I 
will not panegyrise the rival. I leave to those whose 
support, as the representatives of manufacturing and urban 



78 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

populations, Lord John Russell unhesitatingly preferred to 
all terms with the agricultural constituencies, — the grateful 
task to extenuate his merits, and enforce his offences. To 
me his name is identified with the memory of imperishable 
services ; and I feel too much regret to differ from him, 
not to be reluctant to blame. If in him could yet be sup- 
plied what appears to me the main want of the time, there 
is no man I should be so proud — what ? — to follow as a 
Leader? No. To support as a Conciliator. What the 
time now demands is, not the Leader ; it is the Conciliator. 
Wherever I turn, I dread the chance of a chief who is to 
represent all the passions of class or the selfishness of 
interests, — wherever I turn, I see cause to desire that the 
Coming Man may covet, not the bays of the conqueror, but 
the oak wreath of the citizen. 

Is it not so, my dear John ? — pause and reflect ! Carry 
your eye from these figures in the front ; examine the vast 
background that lies beyond. Is it simple strife between 
two parties, in which each requires the strong hand and 
fierce heart of the captain, that meets your survey, and 
solicits your preference ? — No : everywhere you behold 
divisions between classes; jealousies, and feuds between 
national interests; and victory, pushed too far by the 
one against the other, will be a victory achieved over the 
country itself by its own sons, far worse than the fears of 
Lord Ellesmere could ever anticipate from the fleets and 
hosts of the foreigner. Penetrate the smoky atmosphere 
through which rise the tall chimneys of countless factories ; 
examine the heart of those mighty towns, in which all 
theories that affect the interests of labour are discussed 
with the passions which numbers speed and inflame ; where 
the spirit of an eternal election agitates the mass of the 
everlasting crowd — say, if there be not yet reserved for the 
Coming Man the consideration of social questions which no 
Factory Bill has yet settled ; which no Repeal of the Corn 
Laws, after its first novelty is worn away, can lull into rest ; 
and tell me whether it be better for the solution of these 
that the Man shall come as the leader or the conciliator ? 
What are become of our sanitary regulations ? Where are 
the reforms in the law ? Doomed to " lie in cold obstruc- 
tion, and to rot," till statesmen have time to conciliate, and 
till we can look to the forum and not find it a battle-field. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 79 

What have we done to regain the affections and arrest the 
min of our West Indian colonies ? What is the nature of 
the emigration now ponring into Australia and America ? 
Friendly to the mother country, or carrying thence all the 
bitterness engendered by that scorn of complaints which has 
compelled expatriation ? If our colonies are to be our foes 
or our friends, our weakness or strength, all depends on 
whether the Coming Man shall be the leader of a party or 
the conciliator of discontents that may dissolve an empire. 

Look to the state ' of the Church, with a schism that 
threatens far more peril to its future integrity and well- 
being than the petty questions of surplice and gown, which 
inflame congregations, and trouble the peace of bishops, 
So much of learning, of earnestness, of zeal, rising with 
each generation of Churchmen, that leaves the college for 
the pulpit, against the popular feeling, clashing with it, 
warring on it, and remaining within the camp, under its 
separate banner of mutiny, or deserting to the Roman 
Gonfalon, with all the arms of controversy it had found in 
the very arsenal which Oxford had established against the 
foe. " Atque, atque accedet muros Siomana juventus." — 
" And more and more Home's youth invades our walls." 
Woe to the Church, and woe to the peace of our religious 
community, if we are to have our statesmen of the laity 
appear as leaders for or against these spiritual factions of 
the Bianchi and jSTeri, in a war of which texts and citations 
are the ostensible weapons ! A Minister who has the con- 
fidence, not only of the Church, but of the main body of 
Protestant belief, might possibly be able to conciliate — if 
not, time and common sense will ultimately settle — these 
disputes, as they have hitherto settled all disputes among 
the clergy, where they are not whirled away and mixed up 
with the party passions of politicians. Behold the vast 
question of Popular Education, checked in the Legislature 
by the rival jealousies of Church and Dissenter, but daily 
and hourly, without-side the walls of Parliament, occupying 
the thoughts of intelligent men, who see not only, in the 
want of education, an element of crime and misery, but 
who see in education itself, unless it be taken up in a noble 
and fitting spirit, evils as great as can befall society, if in- 
tellectual cultivation (limited to the extent that it must be 
when you deal with large masses whose destined employ- 



80 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

ment is manual labour) is to be held a thing wholly diffe- 
rent and apart from moral instruction and religious disci- 
pline. Who, regarding popular education in its compre- 
hensive application to states, — who, knowing the statistical 
fact, that whereas with us the larger proportion of criminals 
can neither read nor write, in France the larger proportion 
of the worse sort of criminals possesses even more than that 
elementary instruction;* — who does not hope that some 
statesman may arise, with the happy art to conciliate 
Church and Dissent, and to insure to the rising generation 
those early lessons which not only quicken the thought, 
but guide the conduct ? 

Carry your gaze across the Channel — look at Ireland. 
Long distracted from the true objects of civilisation by the 
genius of one leader — Heaven preserve her from another ! 
Consider there the differences affecting the very core of 
society, which hitherto you have so vainly struggled to 
adjust. Recall the late famine there — contemplate the 
vast diminution in the produce of the soil, which your laws, 
intended to prevent the recurrence of such famine, have 
already effected ; while Ireland at least has no foreign 
commerce that can be supposed to recruit the capital that 
is lost to the land. Recall, too, the toil it has cost to the 
wisest to harmonise religious distinctions with due regard 

* By the elaborate tables of M. Guerry, it would seem not only that this 
applies to individual cases, but that in those departemens of France in which 
the average of education is highest, it is found, almost invariably, that crimes, 
against both life and property, are the most relatively numerous ; and crimes 
against life especially, rarest in some districts, such as Limousin and Brittany, 
where the people are most ignorant. Beaumont and Tocqueville, in their 
works on Crime in America, have also rather startled us with the remark, 
that "they cannot attribute the diminution of crime in the northern states 
to instruction, because in Connecticut, where there is more instruction than 
in New York, crime increases with terrible rapidity." It is obviously need- 
less to say that such facts prove nothing against popular instruction ; but 
they do prove that popular instruction alone does not suffice for the ends re- 
quired from it ; that it cannot be safely dissociated from direct moral and 
religious cultivation. A critic in the Edinburgh Revieiv, in noticing these 
Letters, asserts that M. Guerry' s tables, which were published some years 
ago, have been explained away ; and that, though crime may have been found 
most in educated districts, it was not among the educated part of their popu- 
lation. But M. Guerry, who is one of the most illustrious statists in Europe, 
visited England this very year, and in an address at the great meeting of our 
men of science, repeated and enforced the inferences drawn from his tables, 
refuted the explanations on which the reviewer relies, and brought forward 
new facts in support of his proposition, "that mere mental education has not 
been found to diminish crime." 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 81 

to the conscience of both, between Protestant Britain and 
Roman Catholic Ireland — then see this new brand which 
the Pope and his Cardinal have flung amongst the smoulder- 
ing fires of recent rebellion — and who does not sigh, " May 
the Coming Man be the Peace-maker! " 

Conciliation! — this is in all times, and all lands, the 
master-art of the administrator. As the vehement advo- 
cate once raised to the bench becomes the impartial judge, 
so he who in opposition is the leader, in office should be- 
come the arbiter. And that authority has ever been the 
firmest which reconciles the differences of each with the 
order and progi^ess of all. Difficult task, and rarely under- 
taken ! — but wisdom is difficult, and firm administrations 
are rare. 

So far, my dear John, methinks I have your approval ; — 
nay, had I the voice of the orator, here perhaps I might be 
flattered by your cheers. There remains yet a class and 
an interest, towards the propitiation of which there is more 
doubt of a fair hearing. Nevertheless, I deliberately ap- 
proach that subject ; for I honestly think that here the 
conciliator is the most immediately needed. I speak of the 
class which cultivate the land we live in ; I speak of the 
interest which comprises a vast mass of the real property 
of the country — an interest which supports the bulk of our 
poor ; which maintains the clergy and defrays the costs 
that uphold civilisation in rural districts ; which, whether 
it be or be not disproportionately taxed, does at all events 
contribute towards the State to so large an amount, that it 
cannot be materially injured nor depressed by any change 
in the law, without affecting the very capital upon which 
depend the income of the fund-holder and the solvency of 
the nation. 

Now, dear and respected John, when we survey this 
important tribe of your family — pretty well united in the 
complaints of distress, and in the assertion of its cause — do 
you think we may say that this is precisely the class in the 
kingdom to which we can safely refuse attention, and which 
we will thrust out of the pale of all paternal and beneficent 
legislation ? 

But, hark ! — it seems to me that I hear a loud and deri- 
sive outcry. " Pooh ! — Stop your ears, John ! This gentle- 
man, who is in reality a vampire, wants to open the ques- 

G 



82 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

tion of the Corn Law. Don't listen to him ; that question 
is settled. The law is passed — once passed, it cannot be 
repealed. As well talk of repealing the Reform Bill ! " 

You scratch your head, John ; you look puzzled ; but 
still you listen to me : for a moment's reflection tells you 
that there is all the difference in the world between a ques- 
tion of constitutional change, and a question of political 
economy or fiscal arrangement. It is rare, indeed, that a 
law which serves to popularise a Constitution, or advance 
democracy, is repealed. But even that has been done in 
times the most agitated, where the public expediency 
seemed to require it. You yourself, John, once advanced 
into a republic, and drew back into monarchy as fast as 
you could. Again, you once transacted your affairs through 
a triennial parliament, yet you very soon made a retrograde 
movement, and are still compelled to grant a seven years' 
lease to the occupiers of St. Stephen's, notwithstanding all 
the arguments of the National Reform League to prove 
that lease a great deal too long for your interests as land- 
lord. You have only to look to the Foreign News in the 
Times to see that it was but as the day before yesterday, 
compared with your long life, when universal suffrage was 
proclaimed in France ; and but as yesterday that a law has 
been passed which shakes off a weighty per-centage from 
the suffrage so recently created. And the whole history of 
Europe for the last few years does little more than chronicle 
the sudden enactment and as sudden repeal of charters and 
constitutions which wise-heads declare to be the irrevocable 
advance of entire populations. You know, therefore, that 
even a political step backward has been taken, sometimes 
because of the brute force of a despot — but sometimes, also, 
as the voluntary choice of a nation. The Seel revocare 
graclum* applies to progress, not towards the region where 
we all wish to go, but to its dismal antipodes. It is only 
the first step to the infernal regions which Virgil so em- 
phatically implies that mortal man can never recall. But, 
bless your heart, my dear John, as to changes and re- 
changes in commercial regulations, in duties and non-duties 
upon produce, raw and manufactured, — what man in his 
senses, or with no more knowledge of history than he could 
pick up at a grammar-school, ever dreamed that laws affect- 
* [But to retrace the step.] 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. S3 

ing them were not, by their very nature, experiments, and 
the most liable of all laws to revision or repeal? "Ay — 
but corn — the staple of food — the big loaf ? " The very 
thing, my dear John, of all others, that your experience 
tells you has been most subject to the mutability inherent 
to affairs mundane and mortal. 

What, did we never try this experiment before ? Why, 
throughout all the dark ages, the importation of foreign 
corn was substantially free. For about five hundred years 
that experiment was tried ; and much good it did to com- 
merce and manufactures — much good it did to the condition 
of the people ; and well it prevented fluctuations, scarcity, 
and famine ! Free importation of corn ! The duration of 
that experiment extends through the history of our bar- 
barism. From the dawn of civilisation dates the record of 
Protection : it commenced under the dynasty of the House 
of York, in which commerce was first especially honoured 
and upheld — in which, under a king who himself was a 
merchant,* began the sagacious favour to the trading 
middle class, as a counterpoise to armed aristocracy, that, 
under the more tranquil intellect of Henry the Seventh, 
created the civil powers ruling modern dominions ; and 
that Protection, thus first admitted in theory, but long de- 
feated in practice, can hardly be said to have been vitally 
and resolutely incorporated in our national system till the 
very era that confirmed our constitutional freedom, and 
saw the rise of Great Britain to the rank it now holds 
amongst nations — the reign of William the Third. 

Well, this Protection, first vigorously enforced at the 
Revolution of 1688, f lasted for the best part of a century ; 

* Edward IY. — " King Edward went beyond all the contemporary sove- 
reigns in commercial transactions. He owned several vessels, and, like men 
whose living depended on their merchandise, exported the finest wool, cloth, 
tin, and the other commodities of the kingdom, to Italy and Greece, and im- 
ported their produce in return by the agency of factors or supercargoes." — 
Macpher son's Annals of Commerce. In one sense of the word, it was very 
injurious to merchants to have a royal competitor, who paid no duties ; but 
his example served very much to increase the power and dignity of the mer- 
cantile order ; and during his reign that order gained the authority which 
enabled Henry the Seventh to found a middle class on the ruins of the 
Eeudal system. 

f In 1463, reign of Edward the Fourth, importation was legally prohibited 
until the home price reached that at which exportation ceased, viz., 6s. 8cl. 
a quarter (money of that period) ; but, as Mr. M'Culloch observes, " the 
fluctuating policy of the times prevented these regulations being carried 

G 2 



81 LETTERS TO JOHiN BULL, ESQ. 

"and under it," says the commercial historian, " the com- 
merce and manufactures of the country were extended to 
an unprecedented degree." The country wished then, as 
now, to have some return to the system of those blessed 
five centuries of Free Trade in corn; and in 1773 a law 
was passed which a few years ago would have satisfied, 
I suspect, Manchester itself ; for foreign wheat was per- 
mitted to be imported on paying a nominal duty of 6d. 
whenever the home price was at or above 48s. per quarter. 
The Nation tried that plan for about eighteen years, and 
then what did it do ? — this England that the newspapers 
tell us " never goes back ! " — why, it went back, of course ! 
And the price at which foreign importation could take 
place at 6d. was raised in 1791 from 48s. to 54s. ; while 
under 50s. the home producer was protected by a duty of 
24s. 3d. And observe this date, 1791 ! Was that a period 
when the temper of the times was peculiarly submissive, 
and inclined towards political retrogression? It was a 
time more democratic than this — a time when the spirit of 
the first French Revolution was at work through all the 
great towns of the empire. " But the people cried out ? 
There were riots, rebellions, for the sake of the big loaf ? " 
Not a bit of it, my dear John ! The people were a sensible 
people, as the English are in the long run : they had tried 
their experiment — did not like it ; " And," says Mr. 
M'Culloch, with a candid sigh, " there was a pretty general 
acquiescence in the act of 1791." 

" Pretty general acquiescence ! " — the admission is satis- 
factory in extent, but lukewarm in expression : the truth 
is, that no more popular act passed throughout the whole 
reign of George the Third. 

And yet " laws against protection are never repealed ! 
as well repeal the Reform Act ! — England never goes back ! 
— A law about corn is as fixed as the nod of Jove ! " And 
all the while you are going back to the reigns of the Nor- 

into full effect, and, indeed, rendered them in a great measure inopera- 
tive." 

The subsequent law that imposed prohibitory duties on the importation of 
wheat, till the price rose to 53s. 4<tf., and a fixed duty of 85. between that price 
and 8O5., was enacted eighteen years before the great Revolution that placed 
William the Third on the Throne ; but " the want of any proper method for 
the determination of prices went far to nullify the prohibition of importa- 
tion." — M'Culloch. Protection against importation cannot be said to have 
been vigorously and systematically earned out before the reign of William. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 85 

man and Plantagenet ! and insisting on the stability of 
experimental legislature npon the very article and in the 
very mode upon which the History of Civilisation abounds 
the most with precedents of change ! 

I read, indeed, in very popular and influential journals — 
I hear, indeed, from grave authorities ''speaking in their 
place in Parliament " — that " all sensible men " are of one 
opinion upon this point; that to doubt for a moment a 
dogma of the Corn Law Catechism is to forfeit one's claim 
to understanding. Were it an actual fact that the opinion 
of " sensible men " was thus forcibly expressed, I confess 
to you frankly, my dear John, that it would not, as a 
matter of logic and reasoning — as a proof upon which side 
lies the truth — have the slightest weight upon my convic- 
tions. And it never ought to have the slightest weight on 
the convictions of the man who calls himself a reformer in 
politics, or a student in philosophy ; for is there a simple 
question of reform in the laws, or a single principle now 
maintained in philosophy, which has not had at one time 
nearly all who, in their own day, were called " sensible men," 
dead against it ? The " sensible men " of their age were, 
at one time, for burning the Lollards and drowning old 
women with bleared eyes and hook noses — nay, theorems 
in sciences far more positive than Political Economy pro- 
fesses to be — in Astronomy, in Chemistry — which, not 
twenty years ago, all "sensible men" were agreed on, are 
now maintained to be errors. The history of Truth, is the 
history of her opposition to "sensible men." And Truth, 
would never have advanced one step from the wilds of the 
savage, if those who sought for her traces had paused a 
moment to ask of her " whereabout " from the public 
opinion of their day. But not to go further than the very 
subject before us, pray were not the great majority of 
" sensible men," even though. favouring Free Trade, against 
a total repeal of the Corn Law some dozen years ago ? 
And when you — the Free- Traders — so exultingly taunt my 
Lord Derby that, on the recent resignation of the present 
ministers, he could not form a cabinet of statesmen in 
favour of a fixed duty of five shillings — pray is it ten years 
ago that you could not maintain a cabinet in favour of a 
fixed duty of eight ? All your argument as to the fashion 
of opinion being wholly on your side, would prove nothing 



86 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

more than the changeability of such fashion, so far as the 
positive truth of the question at issue is concerned. If 
wholly correct, however, I allow that, whether the doctrine 
itself be true or false, it would present on your side the 
argument of tyrants — Might, if not Right. And public 
opinion is, I allow, to the legislator, though not to the mere 
seeker of truth, an adversary against whom it were idle to 
hoist the banner and flourish the sword. 

But I have lived long enough to find out that there are 
two Publics — a Public invisible, with " airy tongues that 
syllable men's names," much quoted in newspapers, much 
referred to by members of Parliament; — and another 
Public that is visible and tangible, that we meet in street and 
club, in market and shop ; and I cannot say I find this 
latter Public of the same mind as that first mentioned and 
mythical Public, with which neither you nor I, nor any 
creature of flesh and blood, ever comes into positive con- 
tact. I have as wide a range of acquaintance as most 
people, amongst all ranks and all classes ; and whether I 
talk with the statesman, the man of the world, the abstruse 
thinker, whose task it is to master these topics, or with the 
merchant, the man of business, and the intelligent trades- 
men, I find a very large proportion who are in favour, cer- 
tainly not of prohibitory duties, not of a reversal of the 
general policy involved in our tariffs, but of a moderate 
fixed duty upon foreign grain. And, moreover, amongst 
those not in favour of attempting such a modification of 
the law, I find at least half who are far from disliking the 
notion of that said fixed duty in itself — far from doubting 
its beneficial effects, if it could be carried ; but who merely 
doubt whether that incorporeal essence, the other Public, 
will be disposed to accept it. And, though it may seem 
strange to persons less acquainted with the inconsistencies 
of mankind than it has been my professional lot, as a writer, 
to make myself, I positively aver, that among those who, 
thus seen in the streets, and talked with in tranquil nooks, 
either favour a fixed duty altogether, or wish the other 
metaphysical Public might so favour it, I find no small 
number of the very men who enjoy, by votes in Parlia- 
ment or paragraphs in print, the reputation of being 
" sensible and enlightened," and go the whole loaf with 
Mr. Cobden ! 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 87 

The Corn Law settled ! No ! Free-traders and Protec- 
tionists alike feel in their heart of hearts that it is not 
settled ; that it is not in the power of this Parliament to 
settle it. Many large portions of the constituent body, 
many agriculturists themselves, were induced, by the cal- 
culations of great authorities, to consent to what was called 
an experiment. Those calculations have been tested ; and 
it is now not on the speculative probabilities, but on the 
experiment itself, that the agriculturists at least desire to 
pass their opinion. There has been a Parliament with 
faith in the prophecy; there must be a Parliament to 
decide on the nature of its fulfilment. " It is one thing," 
said the shrewd Arab, ; ' to believe the assurance of 
Mahomet that he can move a mountain, and another thing 
to say before the kadi that the mountain has been 
removed." 

Let there be fair play. Let this be the question at the 
hustings. Do not try, by a new Reform Bill, cut and 
carved so as to adjust the franchise to a particular party 
question ; so as to create a constitution for the purpose of 
enforcing an experiment in political economy — do not try, 
by a proceeding so obviously disingenuous, either to silence 
the expression of the complaint you have occasioned, by 
the uproar of recruits to the aggressors, or represent the 
man who contends that one class of his countrymen is 
wronged, as an enemy to the claim of another class not 
yet enfranchised. This great and solemn question of an 
extended suffrage should be approached in a spirit free 
from what, at this moment, must warp justice on either 
side; viz., the heated jealousy of town and country — agri- 
culture and manufactures. The Corn Law, the cry of the 
day, should be really settled, ere a question that may affect 
the duration of the empire can be fairly considered. 

And now, my dear John, before I proceed further, let me 
humbly and respectfully seek to remove from your mind 
an impression which, if entertained by you, as it is by 
many of your family, would go far towards deadening 
any attention that you may condescend to pay to the 
remarks that I proffer. It is industriously represented 
that to question Free Trade, is to abandon Freedom 
itself ; that such sceptics are to be classed with the 



88 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

dust and shadow of defunct Toryism ; that a man who 
doubts whether a fiscal law does not injure a large class of 
his countrymen, more than it will, in the long run, benefit 
any other, is to be considered a recreant to all those noble 
principles which, comprehended in the word Liberty, exalt 
the character of a people, and widen the basis of states. By 
the air that we breathe, John, at least do not do the author 
of these pages that signal injustice ! Perhaps, in bis day, be 
has rendered some service to Freedom — some service to 
the party from which he has at present the misfortune to 
differ. Dear as were to him, in the ardour of youth, the 
principles of political freedom, they are no less dear to him 
in the maturity of manhood. And time has only strength- 
ened his belief that you can select from no class in the 
community a man who has so fervent and absolute a sym- 
pathy with the People as The Writer, who is compelled, 
in every thought and in every study, to look to that 
People as the tribunal of the worth of his labours, and to 
hope in its ultimate judgment for the enduring reward of all. 
But I own to you, my honoured and somewhat anti- 
quated John ! I own to you, that the school in which I learned 
to love liberty seems now as old-fashioned as yourself. For 
I learned that love in the school of the great patriots of 
the Past ; I learned to connect it inseparably with love of 
country ; and it would really seem as if a new school had 
arisen, which identifies the passion for freedom with 
scornful indifference for England. And when, in a popular 
meeting, which was crowded by the friends of the late 
Corn-Law League, and at which one of the great chiefs of 
that combination presided, an orator declared, in reference 
to the defences of the country, that " he thought it might be 
a very good thing for the people if the country were con- 
quered by the foreigner ; v and when that sentiment was re- 
ceived with cheers by the audience, and met with no rebuke 
from the Paladin of Free Trade seated in the chair, I felt 
that, however such sentiments might be compatible with 
Free Trade, — in the school in which I learned to glow at 
the grand word of Liberty, they would have been stigmatised 
as the sentiments of slaves. Yet more recently and more 
notoriously, when Sir James Grraham, who, it now seems, 
is the "Coming Man" of the Free-Traders, introduced 
into an address to the Commons of England a significant 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 89 

menace of the will and the power of the soldiers ; * and 
when that menace w T as not drowned by the indignant out- 
burst, but hailed by the exulting cheers, of a party pro- 
fessing affection for civil freedom, I own again, that, in the 
school in which I learned that liberty rested upon law, the 
barest allusion to the armed force of a standing army as a 
parliamentary argument would have been deemed an out- 
rage on the senate, and applause given to such allusion the 
last degradation that could debase the representatives of 
citizens. Another high authority in Free Trade — nay, the 
very author of the Com Law Catechism — uttered, not long 
since, a sentiment equally worthy the loyalty of an officer 
and the patriotism of an Englishman : — "I would rather," 
said Colonel Thompson, " see a foreign army in possession 
of London six weeks, than see the Protectionists for six 
weeks in possession of those benches." t What ! prefer 
the sword of the foreign conqueror to the vote of legislators 
elected by the free choice of the native ! — No, such is not 
the school in which I learned to love liberty, and these are 
not the authorities I will consent to acknowledge as guides 
to the free men of England. 

But, in truth, my dear John, you have only to open your 
eyes in order to recognise the plain fact, that there is no 
reason why a man should not be a very democrat in politics, 
if he so please, and un ultra-protectionist in trade. The 
Americans are as free and as progressive a people as one 
can well suppose to exist, but they have evinced no peculiar 
affection for Free Trade. The French seem pretty well 
disposed to go all lengths in democracy, but they still 
maintain rather strict notions as to the value of Protection. 
The principle, therefore, of Free Trade may be wise or not ; 
but it is indisputably clear, when we look to other nations, 
that it is perfectly consistent with the freest opinions on 
politics, to have very exclusive notions as to national 
trade. 

It is not, then, incompatible with freedom to believe that 

* " The time has arrived when the truth fully must be spoken. There is 
not a soldier who returns to England from abroad that does not practically 
feel that his daily pay is augmented, — that he has a cheaper, larger, and 
a better mess, — and that he enjoys greater comforts ; and he also knows 
the reason. Xow, Sir, I entreat my honourable friends who sit below 
me to be on their guard." — Speech of Sir James Graham, Privy Councillor 
and ex-Cabinet Minister, in the Parliament of Great Britain, 1851. 

f Speech of Col. Thompson, M.P., April 2, apropos of a County Franchise ! 



90 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

there may be circumstances in which it is expedient to 
protect articles of home produce from the competition of 
the foreigner. But is it so wholly incompatible with wis- 
dom ? Must I be totally without intelligence and instruc- 
tion, if I doubt every article in the Corn Law Catechism ? 
Do the arguments against me rest upon propositions as 
clear as those in Euclid, or are they confirmed by the pre- 
ponderating authorities of history ? 

Looking first to the logic employed by these Free-trading 
denouncers of fallacies, is there any coincidence between 
the premises and conclusions ? Has there been a general 
concurrence amongst modern Free- Traders as to even the 
effect of the recent law upon the price of bread — the 
amount of importation? The League Circular asserted 
that the Corn Law " compelled us to pay three times the 
value for a loaf of bread." Mr. Cobden, on the contrary, 
exclaimed in his speech at Winchester, " The idea of low- 
priced corn is all a delusion ; provisions will be no cheaper." 
Colonel Torrens, Mr. Villiers, the Manchester Chamber of 
Commerce, concurred in the assertion that the first object 
of the Corn Law was to raise the price of corn above its 
natural level. And yet Mr. James Wilson, considered the 
most learned authority of all the repealers, thus denounces 
— what? the fallacies of the Protectionists? No — the 
especial and most popular fallacies of his own Free-trading 
friends ! Thus saith Mr. Wilson in his work on The In- 
fluence of the Com Laws : — " Our belief is, that, if we had 
had a free trade in corn since 1815, the average price of 
the whole period, actually received by the British growers, 
would have been higher than it has been ; that little or no 
foreign grain would have been imported ; and that if, for 
the next twenty years, the whole protective system shall be 
abandoned, the average price of wheat will be higher than 
it has been for the last seven years, or than it would be 
with a continuance of the present system." 

Here, then, in the first great principle, viz., the cheapness 
of food, and the lowness of prices — here, then, we have the 
most contradictory deductions from the same premises. 
Fallacies there must be somewhere, but they are not here 
those of the Protectionists. Here, it is one Corn Law re- 
pealer who answers another. It is the old story of Mun- 
ch ansen : the tiger jumps down the jaws of the crocodile ; 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 91 

the crocodile is strangled by the tiger. What and who 
alone remains safe, challenging onr convictions, insisting 
on onr belief ? Mnnchansen ! 

I come next to the qnestion — so important to labonr — 
the ultimate effect which the repeal of the Corn Laws is to 
have npon wages. Do we arrive at any better agreement 
in opinion amongst those gentlemen who so despise the 
understanding of all who differ from them? I turn to the 
speeches of Mr. Villiers. I know there that I shall find 
the evidence of an acute, subtle, and honest intellect — and 
I find that just as the Protectionists venture still to say, 
the cheapening of bread must sooner or later produce the 
cheapening of labour. On the necessity of lowering wages 
— ay, and not in agricultural districts, but in manufacturing 
towns — on the necessity of lowering them in order to com- 
pete with the foreigner, Mr. Villiers rests half his case. 
And yet, what says his fellow political economist, Colonel 
Torrens? Exactly the contrary: " The true cause of low 
wages is high food \ for then mechanical power is brought 
more and more in competition with human labour, and the 
operative will be employed at wages reduced to the slavery 
point." 

" The repeal of the Corn Laws must lower the wages," 
says Mr. Villiers. " It must raise them," says Colonel 
Torrens. Every fact, real or supposed, adduced by the 
Manchester Chamber of Commerce, tended to show the 
necessity of conforming to the low wages of the Continent. 
And again, Mr. James Wilson, who has a kind word and 
coaxing lure for every class, fells the Manchester Chamber 
of Commerce with this knock-down prediction, " We are 
therefore of opinion that, in the event of a free trade in 
corn, the price of labour in this country would rather be 
increased than diminished." 

The farther we advance in the polemics of Free Trade, 
the more the perplexity gathers : not a result but has its 
separate Free-trading prophet, and not a prophet that does 
not belie his brother. "Will rents fall?" murmurs the 
timid landowner. " Fall ? of course, you vampire ! n cries 
the Manchester Chamber of Commerce ; " you have been 
living on the capital of the farmer ever since the peace." 
" Certainly they will fall," says Mr. Villiers, with polite 
indifference to so small a calamity. 



92 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

" Fall ? — they will rise ! " exclaims Colonel Torrens. 
" They will rise," says Mr. W. W. Whitmore, who was a 
very popular prophet in his day. " Pooh ! don't believe 
them, my dear vampire," argues that dear, good Mr. Wil- 
son ; " my object in removing these Corn Laws is to increase 
the value of your land ! " 

The farmer puts his question, "Will these horrible prices 
last for ever ; and how many quarters of grain are likely 
to be imported ? " 

And straight, therewith, arises such a discord of contra- 
dictory answers, all equally positive, and equally contradic- 
tory, that poor Chawbacon, if he have any animal desire 
still to have bacon to chaw, thinks it best to escape from 
the hubbub, and stick to his old motto, " Live and let live 
in the land we live by." 

Now, my dear Free-Traders, own that the honestest 
vampire who ever set out on his travels in search of an 
understanding, has had very little chance to find it amongst 
you ! Shall he be enlightened with Mr. Villiers ? then he 
can't be enlightened with Mr. Wilson. How can he get rid 
of his fallacies, when every opinion he picks up in exchange 
from one Free-Trader is remorselessly condemned as a fallacy 
by the rhetoric of another. 

The question settled ! Why, it was settled on the faith 
of logic like that I have quoted. And those who believed 
with one set of Free-Traders, are perhaps undeceived by 
the results foretold by another. But, if you say, fairly, 
" Oh, we own this was an experiment on which no one 
could calculate" — can you add, "We have history and ex- 
perience on the side of the general good effects of Free 
Trade ?" When one hears you so confident in your asser- 
tions, one would be tempted to believe that, under all cir- 
cumstances, and in all nations, the prosperity of trade has 
been found to depend upon its freedom ; that all depart- 
ments of commerce wither under protection, and expand 
in the open air of competition. But when we turn to 
history, we find nowhere sufficient facts to prove the pros- 
perity of commercial nations under a system of perfectly 
free trade, while we have abundant facts to prove the 
prosperity of the greatest commercial states in the history 
of the world under systems of protection. The longest 
pre-eminence in commerce ever enjoyed by a state, since 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 93 

Cartilage, is that of Venice — the earliest commercial city in 
our modern era. For five centuries this little community 
maintained a trading ascendency, which is one of the 
marvels of human annals. With little natural advantages, 
and under a wretched form of government, Venice was the 
most illustrious navigator, the most renowned manufacturer, 
of the globe. All the other contemporaneous maritime 
powers of earth combined, scarcely equalled the Venetian 
commerce from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. 
Under what system arose her greatness ? Free Trade ? — 
No; under a system that grasped at monopoly, and in- 
trenched itself under every imaginable rigidity of protec- 
tion.* Our accounts of the ancient trade of Genoa are less 
ample than those of Venice ; but they leave no doubt, at 
least, that in its palmiest time it was guarded with the 
laws most opposed to the enlightenment of Free-Traders. 
So jealous were the Genoese of competition that they 
stipulated with kings to banish their mercantile rivals. 
Thus they requested the King of Sicily, a.d. 1156, to expel 
from his territories the merchants of Provence and France. 
And the fierce commercial strife which lasted for nearly 
two hundred years between Venice and Genoa was decided 
in favour of Venice — how ? — by her wisdom in opening her 
markets ? Oh no — by her good luck in securing the mono- 
poly of the trade of the Black Sea, and becoming, by the 
revolution of the Eastern Homan Empire, the master of 
markets that she most rigidly protected. And how did 
Genoa, for a short time, regain the ground she had lost in 
her struggle with Venice ? — by reversing her commercial 
policy, and abjuring her villanous systems of Protection ? 
Oh no — by upsetting the Latin Empire, and obtaining from 
the Greek she restored, the keys of the Black Sea, and the 
principal part of the monopoly which had enriched the 
Venetians. If we go back to the commerce of the Ancient 
World, and strive to pierce the obscurity which wraps its 
economical regulations, we find nothing to sanction the 
assertion that Protection is injurious, or unshackled com- 
petition essential, to the prosperity of Commerce. Athens 
was the most considerable commercial state of Greece. 
Much, at the first glance, appears to favour the Free- 

* Dart;, Histoire de la Repablique de V6nise; unrivalled as an authority 
on this State. 



94i LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

Traders, in our information respecting the old delight and 
teacher of the world. The necessities of the soil, and the 
magnitude of the population, obliged Athens to favour to 
the utmost extent the importation of corn. Unquestionably, 
the early stimulus to maritime enterprise, which could not 
but goad a people living on the shore, and driven betimes 
to search elsewhere for their food, tended to sharpen the 
activity and intellect of the Athenians, and, as I have else- 
where observed,* made one secret of their after greatness. 
But I apprehend that it made also a main cause of their 
after downfall. They paid dear for their Egyptian corn. 
All the regulations of their ablest statesmen, all the seve- 
rities of their most stringent laws, all the power of their 
vigilant fleets, could not save them from the greatest 
fluctuations in the price of corn. In vain were the Attic 
promontories garrisoned for the protection of ships bring- 
ing corn to the Pirasus ; in vain the City of the Violet 
Crown sought to make herself the granary of the world. 
All her arts and all her genius could not save her from the 
distresses which attend the country that depends on the 
foreigner for the food of the population. Scarcity at Athens 
was only to be met, and that partially, by provisions incom- 
patible with modern empires ; viz., ample storehouses and 
gratuitous distribution of corn. Fluctuations greater than 
have ever been known under a system of protection, no policy 
could prevent. And it is possible that this necessity to 
seek elsewhere, not only empire, but one market to counter- 
balance the vicissitudes of another, contributed to the fatal 
ambition by which Athens eventually lost both political 
freedom and maritime supremacy. Her population that 
gathered round the fleets of Nicias saw, in the anticipated 
conquest of Sicily, not only an addition to the empire, but 
fresh corn-supplies for the Pirasus. 

But Athens was a free trader for corn, because her neces- 
sities made her so. Athens was not a free trader where 
national interests and national policy suggested prohibi- 
tion. She would not export the timber, which might 
supply her rivals with shipping, to be used against herself ; 
she would not export the weapons for which her manu- 
factories were renowned, to arm an enemy ; she would not 
import the commodities of hostile states, nor give her 
* Athens, its Else and Fall, yol. i. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 93 

markets to Boeotia and Megara. "In brief," as Boeckh 
justly observes, "the Athenians did not avoid any restriction 
of commerce, so long as it appeared profitable to them." * 
Holland has been a free trader in corn. She required 
the provision her own soil could not adequately supply ; but 
though in this respect Holland has been held out to us by 
Free-Traders as an example. Holland was not, in her 
greatest day, what is meant by a Free- Trader. In that 
branch of commerce on which she mainly herself depended, 
— her fisheries, — Holland was jealously restrictive. Her 
commerce with India was carried on through the monopoly of 
a company, and, no doubt, to her disadvantage. But what 
was the main cause of the commercial eminence of Hol- 
land ? She herself was one monopoly. Her greatness was 
in the feebleness of her rivals. Her judicious tolerance to 
religion, her hospitable reception of all aliens and strangers, 
might certainly assist towards the accumulation of her 
wealth ; or, to use the words of her own merchants, " make 
the cause that many people not only fled thither for refuge 
with their whole stock in ready cash, and their real valu- 
able effects, but also settled and established many trades, 
fabrics, manufactures, arts, and sciences in the country." 
But the great and paramount cause of Dutch prosperity in 
the seventeenth century was the absence of competition. 
The absence of the very principle which you allege is vital 
in all cases to the healthful action of trade and barter ! 
Let Mr. M'Culloch here speak for himself: "During the 
period when the Republic rose to great eminence as a com- 
mercial state, England, France, and Spain, distracted by 
civil and religious dissensions, or engrossed wholly by 
schemes of foreign conquest, were unable to apply their 
energies to the cultivation of commerce, or to withstand 
the competition of so industrious a people as the Dutch. 
They, therefore, were under the necessity of allowing the 
greater part of their foreign, and even of their coasting 
trade, to be carried on in Dutch bottoms, and under the 
superintendence of Dutch factors. But after the accession 
of Louis Fourteenth, and the ascendency of Cromwell had 
put an end to internal commotions in France and Eng- 
land, the energies of these two great nations began to be 
directed to pursuits of which the Dutch had hitherto 
* Boeckh* s Public Economy of Athens, Book i. 



96 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

enjoyed almost a monopoly. . . . The Dutch ceased to be 
the carriers of Europe without any fault of their own." * 

Hitherto, then, the Dutch had enjoyed a virtual monopoly. 
Their greatness was the absence of competition — it declined 
as competition arose. It is so distinctly stated in the luminous 
Dissertation drawn up from the communications of their 
own merchants. Here, then, was Holland, with all the 
advantages attributed to a thorough free trade in corn, 
which could nevertheless not keep its pre-eminence when 
other nations began to compete ; and its commerce declined 
mainly from two causes — competition and great taxation. 
Will free trade in corn suffice to remedy those causes in 
other countries ? No ! Home taxation and foreign com- 
petition !— these are the enemies to England now as to 
Holland before. Free trade in corn could not preserve to 
Amsterdam its ascendency, — free trade in corn cannot give 
monopoly to Manchester. 

I argue not in exclusive favour of Protection. I say, 
simply, that those who attribute all advantages to the op- 
posite system have not facts sufficient to render their theory 
indisputable ; that in all the commercial States in the 
history of the world, the policy of Protection has been ad- 
mitted — more or less stringent, according to the expediency 
of the State ; that the duration of commercial eminence in 
the most restrictive of all modern States, Venice, was more 
than double that of the most liberal of all modern States, 
Holland ; that England has grown up into the greatest 
commercial commonwealth now existing, under systems of 
Protection ; that under systems of Protection the rivals 
she has to encounter, in America, in Germany, in France, 
nourish and increase ; that even our cotton manufacture, 
" that hardy child of Free Trade," was shown, before a 
Committee of the House of Commons, to have increased in 
the years between 1812 and 1826 in the ratio of only 270 
per cent., while the cotton manufacture of France, " that 
sickly offspring of Protection," had increased in the ratio 
of 310 per cent. ; and this in spite of French duties, the 
most really injudicious, on raw cotton and iron. " The in- 
crease," says Mr. Porter, f "has since gone forward with 
at least equal speed, the quantity of cotton used by the 

* Commercial Dictionary — Art. " Amsterdam." 

f Progress of the Nation, Sect. ii. c. 3, "Manufactures." 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 97 

manufacturers of France in 1843 having been equal to 
132,000,000 of pounds, being about 70 per cent, addition 
in ten years, and about 22| per cent, of the quantity used 
in the same year in the United Kingdom." And if we ask 
the cause of this progress in France, I suspect we shall 
soon find the u reason why." It is that she excludes the 
competition to which you so vainly invite her. In fine, no 
man can anywhere discover in history that Protection has 
been the cause of decline in any commercial State ; the 
cause invariably has been found to be in the awakened 
energies of other countries ; the pre-eminent state has lost 
its monopoly, through the competition of fresh rivals, in 
lands less taxed. It is quite true, that the judicious and 
tempered opening of some particular branch of trade, over 
protected, may often give it fresh stimulus and vigour ; 
this was signally the case with the English Silk Trade ; 
but it is equally true, that Protection to a certain, some- 
times to a high, degree is necessary to other branches of 
trade at particular epochs. Nay, let us take the Silk 
Trade itself. There was a time when it was expedient to 
repeal the prohibitions, which gave to our silk manufacturer 
the monopoly of the home market ; but there was a time 
when, without those prohibitions, the Silk Trade would 
have been without any market at all. The law of prohibi- 
tion was enacted in 1765. Let any man look back, andses 
the comparative perfection of foreign looms at that period, 
and say, whether it would have been possible for the Eng- 
lish manufacturer to have competed with his continental 
rival. What does Mr. Porter* himself remark on this 
head : — " By this prohibitory law, the English silk manu- 
facturers were legally secured in the exclusive possession of 
the home market ; from which, in the then imperfect condi- 
tion of the manufacture, they would have been driven by the 
superior fabrics of foreign looms." The true reason why the 
prohibition finally failed was, that silk is an article against 
the importation of which prohibition is in vain. The 
smuggler stepped in, and redressed the market. But as 
long as the prohibition was effective, the manufactory 
thrived, and the operative had from 30s. to 40s. a week. 
When, in the beginning of the present century, the smug- 
gler became formidable, the manufactory drooped and 

* Progress of the Nation, Sect. ii. c. 2. 

n 



98 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

wages fell : it was then expedient to remove a useless prohibi- 
tion. The smuggler was a more terrible rival than the 
Lyonnese. But the manufacture really rose while the pro- 
tection was de facto strict, and fell exactly in proportion as 
the prohibition, though legally the same, became practically 
inoperative. The silk trade, when Mr. Huskisson legislated 
for it, was precisely in that state when an opened market 
gave stimulus and refreshed vitality; in 1765, an opened 
market, as Mr. Porter himself owns, would have destroyed 
it. Again, take the German States included in the Prussian 
League : they begin to compete with the English manu- 
facturer j but with all their advantages of cheap food and 
cheap labour, could they do so, if not protected ? What 
does our friend Mr. Porter say, too, on this head? — "At 
present it is only through the imposition of considerable im- 
port duty on the German States that their cotton goods are 
able in any way to compete with English fabrics." And what 
does he add ? — " But it is altogether impossible to say how 
long this state of things may continue ; and it may reason- 
ably be expected that the German artisans will in time 
acquire a degree of skill and experience which, aided by 
the lower cost of subsistence in Germany as compared with 
England, will render their rivalry formidable to Manchester 
and Paisley — at least in neighbouring countries, if nob in 
more distant parts of the world ! " What ! this formidable 
rivalry against our cotton manufacture — " that hardy 
child ! " Is the rivalry, too, a " hardy child," growing up 
under Free Trade ? ISTo ! — under a system of Protection, 
without which, Mr. Porter himself tells us, the Germans 
" are not able in any way to compete with our fabrics ! " 

It is clear, therefore, that what is one man's meat may 
be another man's poison. It is natural that the Manchester 
•manufacturer should be desirous of competing with the 
German ; it is natural that the German should, at present, 
beg to be excused ; it is natural that the Cracovian corn- 
grower should be desirous of competing with the English ; 
it is natural that the English corn-grower should be un- 
willing to have that honour thrust upon him. A State can 
adopt no dogma for universal application, whether of Pro- 
tection or Free Trade. In those branches in which it 
produces more or better supplies at less cost, it must 
naturally court Free Trade ; in those branches where its 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 99 

produce is less or its cost greater than that of its neigh- 
bours, it must either consent to the certain injury, the 
possible ruin, of that department of industry, or it must 
place it under Protection. Free Trade, could it be uni- 
versally reciprocal, would therefore benefit Manchester 
s Germany, and injure Lincolnshire versus Poland. 
The English cotton manufacturer thoroughly understands 
this when he says, with Mr. Cobden, "Let us have Free 
Trade, and we will beat the world ! " But the world does 
not want to be beaten ! Prussia, France, and even America, 
prefer "stupid selfishness " and protected manufactures to 
enlightened principles and English competition. When the 
English manufacturer says, " he wants only Free Trade to 
beat the world," he allows the benefit of Protection to his 
rivals, and excuses them for shutting their markets in his 
face. 

But whether Free Trade be, in all cases, right or wrong, 
every one has allowed that we can't have it. To Free 
Trade, fairly and thoroughly carried out, there are more 
than fifty million obstacles to be found — in the Budget.* 

That we must lay certain duties on certain foreign 
articles of general consumption, and cramp the home 
producer by the iron hand of the exciseman, are facts 
enforced upon our attention every time the miserable man 
doomed to hold the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer 
goes through the yearly agonies of his financial statement. 
Free Trade, too, in the proper acceptation of the term, by 
all the laws of grammar and common sense, requires two 
parties to the compact — the native and the foreigner. Be- 
tween you and me, John, I see no hope of the foreigner. 
I wish, however, to raise no argument upon this, against 
the policy of our tariffs. Reciprocity may be good ; but I 
allow that it is not essential. Wherever it is for our in- 
terest to open our markets, it would be idle to wait till 
the foreigner, against his idea of his interests, opened his 
own. All that I would observe is, that such one-sided 
liberality may be judicious and politic, but it has no right 
to the appellation of Free Trade. 

But the name matters little ; and the real question that 

* u To expect that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored to 
Great Britain is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever 
be established in it." — Adam South' s Wealth of Nations^ Book iv. c. 11. 

H 2 



100 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

now opens before us is the special application of a special 
principle to the commodity of grain. 

Free Trade at present means the free importation of 
foreign corn ; and that is the question I proceed to consider. 
In doing so, I shall make no declaration of war on political 
economy. I will not refuse to it the name which its pro- 
fessors arrogate for it — a science — though I cannot hold 
with M. Say that it has been investigated on the Baconian 
principle of philosophy — viz., the inductive. I do not 
think that it has proceeded from the collection, examina- 
tion, and weighing of the largest number of experiences, 
and then, and not till then, deducing thence its general 
maxims. For obviously, were it so, we should not find 
such notable differences as I have shown in anticipations 
amongst its disciples,* nor so startling a disparity between 

* If two men of the acuteness of Mr. Villiers and Mr. Wilson were study- 
ing any natural science according to the inductive philosophy, they would not 
differ as to facts produced by certain agencies, though they might differ 
widely as to the nature and inherent principle of the agencies themselves. 
They would both, agree, for instance, that heat expands bodies ; but the one 
might contend that the nature of heat was an accident, and the other a sub- 
stance, as philosophers have disputed from the time of Bacon to this day : 
they would, doubtless, come to a like result as to a proposition on the specific 
gravity of a fluid, though as to the cause of fluidity in bodies they might be 
wholly at variance. Mr. Villiers might assert that it depended on the globu- 
lar form of the particles, Mr. Wilson on the caloric contained between them, 
or on both combined. For, notwithstanding the centuries that have passed 
since the experiment of Archimedes on fluid, those questions as to cause are, 
I believe, still open to discussion. Had they studied political economy in 
the same way, through induction and experiment, they could never differ as 
to whether a" law like that put in motion by the opening of the home corn- 
market, through free importation, would raise or lower wages and prices ; 
though they might fairly differ as to the abstract nature of the principle 
which produced the effect. Eut this is precisely the reverse with them, as 
with all the exclusive students of political economy — they concur wonder- 
fully as to the abstract principles, and differ only as to the results ; — whether 
political economy yet fails in what is the great and ultimate source of know- 
ledge, viz., "the experience not of one man only, nor of one generation, but 
the accumulated experience of mankind in all ages ; " * or whether, from the 
many disturbing elements which society interposes between cause and effect, 
it cannot be thus inductively followed — certain it is, that they do not, as ex- 
perimental philosophy demands, " suspend the preconceived notions of what 
might or ought to be the order of nature in any presupposed case, and con- 
tent themselves with observing as a plain matter of fact what is ; f but 
rather pursue the opposite and more popular principle condemned by Bacon, 
viz., " of explaining phenomena according to their own preconceived 
notions." Now that mode of philosophising which makes sure of the re- 
sults of a given agency under certain conditions, and reserves to the last the 



* Herschel's Discourses on Natural Philosophy. + Ibid. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ, 101 

the fund of its experiences and the rigidity of its dogmas. 
It has rather, I think, proceeded in "that opposite way" 
which Bacon * has condemned, and in which, according to 
him, no subtlety of definition, and no logical acuteness, 
can suffice to avail for the establishment of truth. It has 
rather commenced with the abstract principles, and then 
selected the experiences on which to support them — resem- 
bling somewhat that ingenious philosopher of whom Con- 
dillac informs us, who blessed himself with the persuasion 
that he had discovered a system that was to explain all the 
phenomena of Chemistry, and hastened to a practical 
chemist to communicate his discovery. "Unhappily," 
said the chemist, "the chemical facts are exactly the re- 
verse of what, in this most luminous and ingenious dis- 
covery, you suppose them to be." " Tell me," then cries 
the philosopher, nothing daunted, " what the facts are, that 
I may explain them by my system ! " But whether or not 
political economy be a science rather than a system, and 
a science based upon induction rather than logic, it is a 
study affording the most valuable suggestions, throwing 
light upon much that had been hitherto obscure; it is 
allied to researches with which I have for years been 
familiar ; I have pondered it with attention, I would speak 
of it with respect ; and it is the more my interest to do 
so now, for I shall rest much of my case on reference to 

general maxims to be deduced, (nay, if it never even pretends to ascertain 
the abstract cause thereof,) can rarely be unsafe. But that other mode of 
philosophising in which men so able as Messrs. Wilson and Villiers can 
concur in asserting their absolute knowledge of the abstract principle, aud of 
its infallibility, and yet contend that its application under the circumstances 
they are agreed on will produce totally opposite phenomena, is obviously 
always liable to mislead us into very great errors. 

* Bacon, Nov. Org., Lib. i. c. 19. [Bacon, in the passage here particu- 
larly referred to, says : Duce vice sunt atque esse possunt ad inquirendum ct 
inveniendum veritatem : that is, There are and can be but two ways of in- 
vestigating and discovering truth. Altera a sensu et ad partieularibus 
advolat ad axiomata maxim* generalia, atque ex lis principiis eorumque 
immota veritate judicat et invenit axiomata media: atque hoee via in 
usu est : that is, The one flies from sense and particulars to the most general 
axioms, and from these as first principles, and their undisputed truth deter- 
mines and discovers middle axioms ; and this is the way which is in use. 
Altera a sensu et partieularibus excited axiomata, ascendendo continent e 
et gradation, id ultimo loco perveniatur ad maxime generalia : qua vice 
vera est sed intentata : meaning, The other draws out the axioms from sense 
and particulars by ascending uniformly, and step by step, so that at last 
it reaches the most general or comprehensive; and this is the true way, but 
untried.} 



102 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

its maxims and the admissions of its authorities. But I 
must be permitted to observe, that it is a common mistake 
with the ordinary run of students in political economy, to 
mistake altogether the nature of that science, and the 
reservations imposed upon the practical adoption of its 
principles. Political economy deals with but one element 
in a state — viz., its wealth ; and the soundest political 
economists will be found cautiously stopping short of what 
would seem the goal of an argument with some such ex- 
pression as — "But this belongs to national policy." Political 
economy goes strictly and sternly, as it were, towards the 
investigation of the rigid principle it is pursuing ; it has 
only incidentally to do with the modifications which it 
would be wise to adopt when you apply the principle to 
living men. Of living men, their passions, and habits, 
and prejudices, it often* thinks no more than Euclid does 
when he is demonstrating the properties of a triangle. 
All this is out of the province of the political economist, 
and within that of the statesman. 

Far from blaming political economy for this, it could 
not be what it professes to be if it were otherwise. The 
persons to blame are those who insist on applying all its 
principles, as if they were describing lifeless things, and 
not dealing with human beings ; and hence innumerable 
mistakes, made by hasty readers, not only in the applica- 
tion, but we may say also in the comprehension, of the 
principle itself. 

Political economy, for instance, says drily, " It is for 
the interest of a nation to do so and so." Well, grant that 
it is so ; but every man who has dipped into metaphysics 
should know that there are different degrees of interest, and 
sometimes one degree of interest will practically be found 
to counterbalance the other ; just the same as in phreno- 
logy, Grail or Spurzheim would say, " Here is a strong 

* Mr. Senior, indeed, says distinctly that the political economist " is not 
to give a single syllable of advice, and that his business is neither to recom- 
mend nor dissuade, but to state general principles." Mr. M'Culloch, dis- 
senting from this restricted view of the science, yet very properly distin- 
guishes between political economy and politics : while he owns with a can-, 
dour that proves the largeness of his intellect — " However humiliating the 
confession, it is certainly true that, owing to the want of information, not a 
few of the most interesting problems in economical legislation are at present 
all but insoluble." 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 103 

impulse to conibativeness, but is the man then combative ? 
No ; for here are two larger organs of caution and bene- 
volence — that counterbalance the combative faculty." 

Bearing in mind this variety of interests or impelling 
motives, let us take a favourite proposition in political 
economy, and we will do so in the words of Mr. Mill. 

"It is the interest of two nations to exchange with 
one another two sorts of commodities, as often as the rela- 
tive cost is different in the two countries." Now I will 
grant the general proposition ; but it will often happen 
that there is a still stronger interest not thus to interchange 
particular articles. For instance, Athens manufactures 
admirable weapons at a cheaper cost than Bceotia ; Boeotia 
produces corn, which Athens very much needs, at a much 
cheaper cost than Athens. Is it to the interest of Athens 
to exchange her weapons for the corn ? Not if she has 
cause to dread the hostility of Boeotia, and believes that 
the weapons she thus sends out will be used with advantage 
against her freedom and existence. There is an interest 
to effect exchange with two sorts of commodities, the rela- 
tive cost of producing them being very different in the two 
countries, upon the abstract general principle, but, in the 
special case, a much stronger interest not to furnish Bceotia 
with weapons. 

Take another case. Suppose Germany has lately in- 
stituted a cotton manufacture, but produces cotton goods 
with greater labour (that is, more cost) than England, and 
England, on the other hand, produces corn at more cost 
than Germany — Is it for the interest of Germany to ex- 
change her corn for the English cotton goods ? No ; for, 
as it has been seen, we have Mr. Porter's assurance that 
nothing but protective duties can preserve the German 
cotton manufacture from ruin, as against the English com- 
petition. Therefore here, again, though, on the abstract 
general principle, it is the interest of Germany to exchange 
with England two sorts of commodities, of which the rela- 
tive cost is different, yet she has a stronger interest, in the 
special case, to guard the cotton manufactures, which may 
ultimately enrich her much more than the price she receives 
for the corn that she sends into England. So, finally, 
without in the least disputing the abstract proposition of 
Mr. Mill, a statesman may well consider, that, seeing the 



104 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

importance to England of a thriving and prosperous agri- 
culture, and all the danger to the State that may be in- 
curred by the impoverishment and disaffection of many 
millions of his countrymen, there is a greater interest, in 
the special case, to limit an exchange which may be as 
injurious, for a time at least, to the British husbandman, 
as Germany holds it injurious to the German cotton manu- 
facturer. For the political economist deals with the dead 
principle — the statesman, with the living men. 

These distinctions would be perfectly clear to all per- 
sons, if they would only regard political economy as they 
do any other investigation of art or science. First, with 
regard to the abstract truth of its principles, and next, to 
the prudence of applying them in each special instance. 

Suppose that I write a treatise on Architecture, wherein 
I geometrically establish the fact that the Parthenon is a 
most beautiful building. If my neighbour, Squire Haw- 
thorn, who lives in an old-fashioned irregular country- 
house, as unlike the Parthenon as a house can be, runs to 
me out of breath, transported to enthusiasm by my admir- 
able treatise, — " My dear sir, I have read your work ; you 
have proved to my satisfaction that no building on earth is 
so perfect as the Parthenon. Pray, would you advise me 
to pull down Hawthorn Hall, and build a country-house 
exactly on the model of which you have so lucidly given 
the geometrical designs ? Shall I turn Hawthorn Hall 
into a Parthenon ? What's your advice ? " 

" Sir," I should answer, unless I had a sinister interest 
to answer otherwise, " I am not the proper person of whom 
to ask that advice ; whether it is for your interest to pull 
down your very irregular old house, — whether, if you did, 
you would be as comfortable in a Parthenon ; and, however 
beautiful that edifice, find that it could be adapted to the 
wants of your family and the difference of your climate — 
whether you could even live in it, without catching your 
death of cold — are all considerations with which I had 
nothing to do when I wrote my treatise. My object was 
but to explain the true principles of Architecture, and 
establish the excellence of the Parthenon upon geometrical 
principles ! " 

Squire Hawthorn would have no right to blame me for 
having written my treatise and disturbed his mind ; but he 



LETTERS TO JOHX BULL, ESQ. 105 

would be a monstrous great fool if he turned his old hall 
into a Parthenon ! 

In this Letter, I trust, my dear John, that I have cleared 
my way to a fair and candid examination of a subject 
uppermost in men's minds ; that I have shown that there 
is nothing in that great storehouse of truth called History 
which should induce us to believe that a fiscal enactment 
once passed, must be regarded as a law not to be repealed ; 
and that, according to history, such belief can be least 
entertained on the matter of the very enactment which we 
are forbidden to question ; that there is nothing in the 
doubt whether absolute Free Trade in corn be desirable, 
that implies indifference or distaste to freedom in political 
opinions ; that, whether examining the contradictory asser- 
tions of the Corn Law repealers, or the records of nations, a 
man may presume to form a judgment in favour of Protec- 
tion applied to certain articles of home cultivation and 
industry without being necessarily excluded from the 
average understanding of the human biped; that it is 
obvious, by the admission of the great authorities of Free 
Trade themselves, that there are circumstances under which 
a check upon competition, by means of protective duties, is 
necessary to the article produced ; and finally, that, what- 
ever our respect for political economy, it is one thing to 
accept the general principle, another to enforce its applica- 
tion to each special instance. 

Think of all this, my dear John ; and having commenced 
with stating that the policy of the Coming Man should be 
that of conciliation, now let us see whether it will be just 
and wise to leave out of that policy the class whose claims 
I am about to advocate. 

Your affectionate well-wisher, 

And A labourer, though 

A LANDLORD. 



LETTER II. 

My Dear Johx, — I closed my last Letter by subscribing 
myself "A Labourer, though a Landlord.'' Why did I 
arrogate that title ? not merely as a boast, though it be 



106 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

one of which I am justly proud. "Why ? Because, when 
my main income was derived from my labour, ten 
years before I was a landlord, I recorded, by my vote 
in Parliament, the same opinion that I profess now — 
viz., that a total repeal of the Corn Laws would ulti- 
mately prove injurious to the true social interests of this 
community. 

If I have, as a landlord, a landlord's interest in the 
question, it cannot, therefore, be taken in account against 
my honesty in the formation of my convictions — let it bo 
taken in account against the motives that still uphold my 
consistency in the same faith, to whatever extent it may bo 
supposed that self-interest perverts the judgment or mis- 
conceives the argument. Yet, even so, it is the law of our 
land, and the privilege of freemen, for each class to state 
its own grievance. And were men to be dismissed unheard, 
because they felt the injury of which they complain, pray 
tell me what grievance, since the world began, would ever 
have been redressed ? 

On the other hand, my dear John, while I believe that 
my land, which is free from all mortgage, is not of that 
kind on which the severest loss is likely to be incurred ; 
so, health permitting, I have as a labourer a resource that 
all landlords do not enjoy — and if my rents should fall, no 
corn law will affect my pen and my brain, — I can work ; I 
am used to it. Moreover, dear John, you are too fine- 
hearted a fellow not to own that avarice is rarely the most 
cogent motive in the ambition of public men. It is some- 
thing to see myself separated, not by my own change of 
opinions, but by theirs, from the party with which, in 
public, I have acted, and the men whom, in private, I have 
honoured or loved — and on this, as on all matters where 
conviction is strong and earnest, whatever divides the 
opinion, estranges the friendship ; — it is something for 
many years, and those spreading over the prime of man- 
hood, to have stood alone and excluded from the noble 
field of action — Parliamentary life. Had I consented not 
to compromise, nay, but to conceal, the doubts I entertain, 
as to the success of the experiment made on the original 
and primary source of capital, — land, — I should have been 
at no loss for a seat in Parliament. But I could not accept 
the experiment as a fait accompli until its results were 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 107 

tested, and tlius my principles, right or wrong, at least 
have not furthered my ambition. Nor, if the Free-Traders 
are right, and the authority of intelligence and the power 
of numbers are opposed to the views I entertain, is it 
much to my interests, as a writer, to hazard at once my 
reputation with the few and my popularity with the many, 
by plying, with feeble oar, against the strong current of 
the day ? 

Wherefore, all these circumstances, pro and con, balanced 
fairly one against the other, I trust that I may be exonerated 
from the suspicion of interests purely sinister and selfish, 
and that, if my views be erroneous, they will be held those 
of a man who is accustomed to carry his gaze beyond the 
map of his estate, and is capable of fears more generous 
than such as darken the perspective that is closed by an 
audit-day. And though I have advanced the doctrine that 
there is nothing which in historical precedent or political 
science should make us condemn the principle of Pro- 
tection, as applied whether to land or to manufactures, in 
certain periods, or under certain conditions, I am inclined 
to go very far — nay, as far as the most eminent political 
economists, whom Time acknowledges to be the standard 
authorities of their school, in the policy of exposing native 
agriculture to the risk of foreign competition, and of pro- 
curing a steady and regular importation of corn, as the 
best means of extending the market of our manufacturers. 
I cannot consent, it is true, to say with Mr. Cobden, that 
the fear of depending solely for the staple of food upon 
the soil of the foreigner is an exploded fallacy. If it be 
so, it is a fallacy that was never exploded from the mind of 
the man who most combined the practical statesman with 
the political economist — I mean Mr. Huskisson. However 
else he might have modified the strong opinions that he 
once expressed upon protection to agriculture, it is noto- 
rious to those who best knew him, that Mr. Huskisson 
never modified, never changed this doctrine, " that in peace 
the habitual dependence on foreign supply is dangerous. 
We place the subsistence of our own population not only 
at the mercy of foreign powers, but also on their being 
able to spare us as much corn as we may want to buy." 
Thus said Mr. Huskisson in 1815 ; and in 1827 he said, 
"I hold that doctrine now, and think nothing so dangerous 



108 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

to this country as to rely too largely and too frequently on 
foreign countries for supplies of corn."* 

I cannot consent, then, to dismiss the authority of a man 
like Mr. Huskisson, upon the risk of depending on the 
foreigner, with the contempt which it inspires in Mr. 
Cobden ; nor do I think that those answers to Mr. Hus- 
kisson which he borrows from Mr. Mill, and considers so 
victorious (viz., " that countries most dependent on their 
neighbours for grain, have enjoyed the steadiest and least 
variable market ; that if one neighbour withholds his corn 
others will send it, and that the abundant harvests of one 
land may atone for the deficiencies of another/') would 
have been considered by Mr. Huskisson incontestably 
established by a sufficient number of experiments and 
facts. But it is not now my object to dispute those pre- 
mises, since I am willing to concede the conclusions to 
which they bring Messieurs Cobden and Mill. And looking 
to the rapid increase of our population, doubting the re- 
sults that some anticipate, from bringing our own waste 
lands into cultivation, seeing the growth aud grandeur of 
our manufacturing interests — knowing that whatever corn 
we take from the foreigner must increase the sale of what- 
ever cotton or other manufacture the foreigner takes from 
us — seeing, moreover, that no system of protection, short 
of prohibition, could prevent our receiving some supplies 
of corn from abroad, I willingly allow, with Mr. Mill, that 
the apprehension of future evil should not operate against 
present good ; and cannot prevail against what nature and 
commerce have made stronger than all arguments, viz., 
necessity. 

I do not, therefore, dispute the policy of opening to 
foreign corn a constant and regular market in our ports — 
and of exposing the home producer to a severe competition ; 
but I do maintain that, while you arrogate Mr. Huskisson' s 
authority, you should so far respect his judgment as to 
take some precaution that, while the supplies of corn from 
abroad are increased, the supplies grown at home do not 

* Mr. Cutler Ferguson, than whom a more honourable and truthful man 
never existed, said in the debate on Mr. Hume's motion on the Corn Law, 
1834: — " I was intimately acquainted with Mr. Huskisson' s sentiments on 
these subjects, and know that to the last it was his opinion that a great 
country like this should not be subject to foreign powers in the article 
of food." 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 109 

incur the risk of being materially diminished — that the 
competition you invite, while it will tend to lower the 
price, may serve to stimulate the energies that will aug- 
ment the quantity ; and so, while fitting the farmer for the 
struggle, save the country from that absolute reliance on 
the harvests and the will of other States, which I firmly 
believe could never exist without endangering our political 
independence as a nation, and subjecting us to more than 
fluctuations — to scarcities, approaching to famine. Are 
these sentiments to be despised ? " Yes," cries Mr. Cobden, 
" the men in fustian would laugh them to scorn ! " Be it 
so — it is at Mr. Huskisson they laugh ! — the sentiments are 
his ; and I will quote his words in order afterwards, my 
dear John, to call your attention to a signal proof that his 
sagacity is already shown to be deeper than that of any of 
the gentlemen, whether they be clothed in fustian or broad- 
cloth, who laugh at him. Thus says Mr. Huskisson ■: — 
" Suppose, as it frequently happens, the harvest in this 
year to be a short one, not only in this^ country, but the 
foreign countries, from which we are fed. What follows ? 
The habitually exporting country, France, for instance, 
stops the export of its corn, and feeds its people without 
any great pressure. The habitually importing country, 
England, which, even in a good season, has hitherto de- 
pended on the aid of foreign corn, deprived of that aid in 
a year of scarcity, is driven to distress, bordering upon 
famine." 

Now observe, my Lord John Russell (in arguing lately 
that the present low prices were to be held no criteria for 
the future) stated, as a peculiar phenomenon in the case, 
"that corn had come exactly from the quarter which no one 
had anticipated — viz. France." 

Mr. Huskisson, at least, was more far-sighted — it is ex- 
pressly France that he names as the quarter from which 
the exports will habitually come. Of this I myself never 
had a doubt — I said so at the time of the Repeal of the 
Corn Laws, not induced to that belief by any examination 
of tariffs and reports, but simply from my personal know- 
ledge of the social habits of the French. It is difficult for 
an Englishman to imagine how the small French proprietor, 
usually a peasant, will pinch and save in his household, in 
order to put monies into his pouch. There is that in the 



110 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

actual property of land, strongly contrasting mere tenure, 
still more service by hire, which, induces the labourer who 
owns it to push economy into what you, my dear John, 
would call the self-mortification of the miser. The more 
corn your farming labouring children can grow, the more 
they will eat ; the more corn Jacques Bonhomme can grow, 
with the better heart he will starve ; — it is something not 
to live upon, but to send away and to sell. And the money 
goes ; — upon mutton and shoes, tobacco and coffee ? No, 
my dear John ; upon buying some other half acre of land — 
which after his death will be equitably subdivided, perhaps 
among a family of five — from whom the self-pinching 
system will start anew.* Prom France habitually you will 
have corn, but there is no country in the world upon which 
it is more dangerous to rely for the quantity and steadiness 
of the supply. Take this year : — suppose that your recent 
change had been some years in operation — that a great 
deal of British land, now devoted to corn, had relinquished 
that grain, as the Free- Traders tell us it ought — that there 
was a scarcity at home — and in the same year a scarcity in 
France — or a quarrel with that somewhat irascible country, 
(which, to do it justice, is always willing to sacrifice self- 
interest to some touchy crochet of honour,) pray do you 
think, then, that the men in fustian would laugh Mr. Hus- 
kisson to scorn ? Or dare you say that they might not be 
inclined to exclaim with him — " Let the bread we eat be 
the produce of corn grown amongst ourselves, and I for 
one care not how cheap it is — the cheaper the better : 
cheapness produced by foreign importation is the sure fore- 
runner of scarcity, and a steady home supply the only safe 
foundation of steady and moderate prices." 

What is it, then, that I ask ? I go much farther than 
Mr. Huskisson did in 1815 ; go as far as I believe he ever 

* It is thus stated in recent statistical accounts of France, that less butcher's 
meat is consumed now by its population than there was under the ancient 
regime, when the state of the agricultural peasantry is represented to have 
been so miserable. And the fact is accounted for (no doubt justly) by the 
asserters of the social improvement effected by the Great Revolution— in the 
doctrine that the small subdivisions of land, which have raised the peasant 
from the serf into the proprietor, have induced habits of extraordinary thrift, 
and that to maintain his land, and to meet its mortgages, he stints himself 
much more in the consumption of food than he did, when living totally from 
day to day without heed of the morrow, upon the wages secured from a 
master. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. Ill 

went. I subscribe to the expediency of opening our ports 
— of greatly increasing our regular importation of corn ; — 
and all that I ask of the manufacturer is this — Fit the 
farmer for the competition you force on him ; and, gaining 
a great deal, concede a little in return ! You say that you 
find in Christianity itself a sanction for the maxim to buy 
in the cheapest, and sell in the dearest market. There is 
another maxim to which the sanction of Christianity is 
more generally conceded — " As ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye also to them likewise." Your friend, Mr. 
M'Cullock, in speaking of the Cotton Trade, and in seeking 
to calm any excess of imprudent compassion which might 
be excited by the sufferings of the children employed in 
the factories, uses these very sensible and conciliatory ex- 
pressions : — 

" The subsistence of 1,400,000 people is not to be en- 
dangered on slight grounds. The abuses, even, of such a 
business, must be cautiously dealt with ; lest, in eradicating 
them, we shake or disorder the whole fabric." 

I concede this proposition in favour of the British 
manufacturers of cotton; and I claim that concession in 
favour of the British producers of corn. 

But in this latter case, it is more than 1,400,000 persons 
whose subsistence is involved. I will take the lowest cal- 
culations of the proportional agricultural population that I 
can find in any Free- Trade authorities ; and it is at least a 
fourth of the entire population in Great Britain, and con- 
siderably more than half the population in Ireland. * And 
from these computations I omit altogether one important 
item, in wealth at least, if not in numbers — I mean the 
landowners, classed under the general head of " Persons of 
independent means." Take, then, the agricultural popu- 
lation of Great Britain at certainly not less than three mil- 
lions and a half ; add to it the millions similarly engaged 
in Ireland. Join to these the landlords "of independent 
means ;" and if you refuse to annex to such numbers the 
most moderate proportion that can be assigned of that part 
of the trading population, such as the ploughwright, the 

* Mr. Porter calculates from the census of 1841, that the farmers, graziers, 
bailiff's, agricultural labourers, 6cc, are to be assessed at 25-17 per cent of the 
population in Great Britain; and 66*15 per cent, in Ireland. '1 he land- 
owners (if of independent means) are not reckoned in either computation. 



112 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

wheel wright, the blacksmith, the farrier — essentially de- 
pendent npon the agriculturist — still you will have in 
Great Britain and Ireland at least eight million persons 
vitally interested in your laws affecting their produce and 
its price. Surely, then, I may well exclaim that the sub- 
sistence of numbers so far exceeding all the population 
engaged in the cotton trade, to whom I make a similar 
concession, should not be hazarded — I will not say on 
slight grounds, but on grounds that have already called 
forth one cry of acknowledged distress ; and that even if 
abuse does exist, in such a business you should be as careful 
of eradicating it, " lest you shake or disorder the whole 
fabric," as you would of interference with the economy of 
the cotton trade. Yet how have we dealt with this mighty 
interest ? We have for more than half a century, by re- 
peated acts of our legislation, approved, confirmed, rooted 
as a very habit of thought into the minds of the cultivators 
of our soil, the idea that Protection from the foreigner is 
necessary to their existence. And having ourselves autho- 
rised that faith, we have suddenly removed all that we 
ourselves have told them their very existence required, and 
brought them into unmitigated competition with lands the 
most fertile which the world can boast, tilled by populations 
exempted from the burdens we bear ! Just see how dif- 
ferently the Free- Traders dealt with the silk manufacture, 
which has been so often cited against us in advocating the 
advantage of foreign competition over protective duties. 
When, by the advice of Mr. Huskisson, you removed the 
prohibition of foreign silk goods, beginning in 1824, you 
left in 1826 an ad valorem duty of 30 per cent, on the im- 
portation of foreign silk goods. You altered the duty to 
specific rates per pound, but so calculated upon different 
kinds of goods as to be equal in most cases to 30 per cent, 
upon the presumed value, this rate being assumed as the 
maximum of protection ; yet was the duty bounded in 
effect to 30 per cent. ? Par from it : twenty years after- 
wards, the duties on crape were from 43 to 50 per cent. ; 
on velvet, from 34 to 50 per cent. ; on silk net, from 36 to 
to 58 per cent. ; on manufactured bonnets, 145 per cent. I 
quote from the statement of Sir Robert Peel, on January 
27, 1846 — eventful day to the agriculturist! 

Such was the protection you left to manufactures in silk 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 113 

when you began to open the trade — snch was the protection 
yon left to them for twenty years. And yon still left pro- 
tection to silk (it exists still) on the very day that yon 
passed sentence on the corn-grower, and doomed him to 
compete, not as the manufacturer of silk does with the 
rival inhabitants of a few towns, and meeting that rivalry 
with advantages no other land possesses — but wherever in 
the universe corn can be sowed in a richer soil, ripened 
under a brighter sun, reaped by a cheaper labour. You 
were as clearly persuaded of the truth of your abstract 
principle of the benefit of free trade in silk as you are in 
that of corn ; but you applied it in the one case with due con- 
sideration of the fact that you were dealing not only with 
the interests, but the convictions (and, if you will, with 
the prejudices) of human beings ; and you have dealt, in 
the other case, with as much sternness as if the machinery of 
your law operated only upon brute matter. Why, when you 
opened the trade in silk, did you leave still to the silk manu- 
facturer duties so protective ? Mr. Huskisson stated the 
reason, and all succumbed to it — "Because, as our manu- 
factures were burthened by taxation, a protection as against 
France was necessary." The reason by which you aided 
the competition that was successful in silk, you throw to 
the winds when you call forth a far severer competition in 
corn. And while you have been thus abrupt and imperious 
in enforcing so wholesale and entire a change upon the 
business in which many millions are engaged, in what 
mode have you shaped your policy so as to soften, at least, 
the austerity of your fiat ? By all that can soothe irrita- 
tion, by all that can encourage effort, by all that can 
lighten burdens ? No. You have done it so that it is 
made to bear a character the most galling ; made to seem 
the triumphant victory of the men who had gone about 
from platform to platform to preach a crusade against 
those whom your change has afflicted ; who had used 
language the most derisive to their understanding, the 
most inflammatory against their motives : whose favourite 
expressions for the owners of the land had been "Vampire" 
and " Blood-sucker," and for the occupiers, " Thick-scull" 
and " Bull-calf." Very good words, it may be, for a cheer 
or a laugh, but not words that make eloquence as per- 
suasive as it is " unadorned." And when the chief to whom 

i 



114 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

this class had committed its interests, and the leader who 
had so shortly before proposed on its behalf a duty of 85., 
concurred to ascribe the principal merit of the wholesale 
change enforced to the head of the Anti-Corn Law League 
— thereby approving an agitation that had created an im- 
perium in imperio, and virtually commending the oratory 
of abuse which yet rung in the ears and rankled at the 
hearts of the victims — can you say that you did not make 
your experiment as intolerable to the spirit of Englishmen 
as it has been abrupt and trying to the resources upon 
which so many millions depend ? The Italian proverb 
saith, " That it must be a very fine tree to make one 
pleased to be hung from it." And a tree more rugged and 
thorny than that on which you have hung the British 
corn-grower, certainly never yet was planted by the hand 
of the legislator. 

Reflect, too, from whom come these assaults on the very 
character of those who advocated the protection our ha- 
bitual legislation had taught to consider essential to their 
existence ? Who denounced them as plunderers and rob- 
bers, bloodsuckers and vampires ? The very men who 
had first introduced protection into the legislature. Thus 
says the Father of Free Trade, Adam Smith : — " The 
merchants and manufacturers seem to have been the ori- 
ginal inventors of these restraints upon the importation of 
foreign goods which secure to them the monopoly of the 
home market. ... It was probably in imitation of them, 
and to put themselves on a level with those who they found 
were opposed to oppress them, that the country gentlemen 
and farmers of Great Britain so -far forgot the generosity 
which is natural to their stations as to demand the exclusive 
privilege of supplying their countrymen with corn and 
butcher's meat." 

And Sir Robert Peel himself, at the very time that he 
extolled the "unadorned eloquence" which had sought to 
arouse the country against the class that was struggling 
for what Sir Robert Peel himself had asserted, during the 
whole previous period of his career, to be the condition of 
life to them and of welfare to the commonwealth, still 
echoed Adam Smith, and said, with the Repeal of the Corn 
Law in his hand — " It id as the mercantile and manufac- 
turing interest which set the example of requiring protection" 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 115 

Of this there can be no doubt. Our statutes tell us that 
the policy of protection was introduced on behalf of the 
manufacturers and merchants, and at their own demand, 
for centuries before it was accorded to the land. 

And if such has been your mode to soothe the pain and 
to cheer the spirit, where has since been your attempt to 
lighten the burden ? 

Nothing can be more true, and nothing more tacitly ac- 
ceded to by the conscience of the community, than the 
proposition Mr. Disraeli has luminously stated — viz., that 
under the system of Protection, offered and insisted on as 
a counter- equivalent, you have built up your present system 
of taxation ; you remove the equivalent, you will not touch 
the taxation. Just consider the vast amount of taxes that 
has been taken off since the war — the manner in which, 
especially of late years, since 1830, the reductions have 
been shaped so as to give the greatest relief or the greatest 
impetus to manufactures ; and out of all those millions so 
dealt with, what, from the passing of the Corn Law in 
1815 to the year 1846, has been the amount of taxes, 
bearing chiefly on agriculture, reduced or repealed ? I 
quote the authority of Mr. Pressley himself before the 
House of Lords — £985,824! — a relief that appears as 
nothing, compared with the vast sums which have been 
cast forth from the revenue to meet the demands of rival 
interests in commerce and manufactures. And justly so. 
Why? because during those years the agriculturists had their 
equivalent — protection ! But the protection is vanished from 
the agriculturist, and the agriculturist stands alone in the 
community without a due share of relief. 

And now, my dear John, as I know you are a lover of 
fair play, even in fighting your enemies, (if, indeed, we 
poor owners and tillers of land are to be so considered,) let 
us see whether we have had something of good faith to set 
off against so much severity — let us see whether you would 
not have been ashamed to have dealt with a Frenchman, 
when you were at war with him, as your agents have dealt 
with your own children. 

In 1846, Sir Robert Peel, in arguing for Free Trade, 
observes, " I have always felt and maintained that the land 
is subject to peculiar burdens." He goes on to argue that 
the question of Free Trade is one of policy — that of relief 

i 2 



116 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

to peculiar burdens on those it may affect, one of justice ; 
and he implies as strongly as man can do, that, having 
decided on the question of policy we should then have to 
consider the question of justice. 

The antithesis was ominous. What Englishman, on 
reading it, will not say with Burke, " It was with the 
greatest difficulty that I was able to separate policy from 
justice. Justice itself is the great standing policy of civil 
society; and any eminent departure from it, under any 
circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy 
at all." But to proceed — 

Lord John Russell, in his letter to the Queen, 1846, 
(read to the House of Commons,) states that the measures 
which Sir Robert Peel had in contemplation appear to 
have been " a present suspension of the duties of corn — a 
repeal of the Corn Laws at no remote period, preceded by 
diminution of duties — relief to the occupiers of land from 
burdens by which they are peculiarly affected, so far as it may 
be practicable." And Lord John adds, in the same letter, 
an opinion yet more strongly expressed as to the said 
burdens — "Lord John Russell is prepared to assent to the 
opening of the ports, and to the fiscal relief which it was 
calculated to convey. He would have accompanied this 
proposal with measures of relief to a considerable extent of 
the occupiers of land from the burdens to which they were 
subjected." 

ISTow, I ask you, John, as an honest man, whether a dis- 
tinct and positive pledge of the relief of burdens on land 
be not hereby and herein held forth as an accompaniment 
to the repeal of the Corn Laws ? — whether many, who in 
Parliament agreed to such a repeal, must not have been so 
induced to agree ? — whether the country generally would 
not have been led on to accept the policy, by the persuasion 
that the justice that was to soften it would be fairly meted 
out ? Well, what has been the fact ? Sir Robert Peel re- 
moved the protection, and left untouched the burdens he 
had engaged to release. It is true that he did at the time 
dwell on some peddling and pitiful mitigations of local 
burdens — some mitigations of a county rate, on the pro- 
portions the land should pay to the gaoler of the prison 
and the doctor of the pauper, on some trifling extension of 
the law of settlement. But there was not a man in the 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 117 

country who did not feel that it was not to such miserable 
doles that Sir Robert Peel could have meant to stint the 
performance of his solemn engagements to the land, if he 
had remained in office, and when, having carried his system 
of policy, his mind would be free to consider freely the 
question of justice. Well, Lord John becomes Prime 
Minister ; he accepts the task of maintaining and per- 
petuating the repeal of the Corn Laws ; but surely with it 
he inherits the pledge to relieve the burdens of the land. 
Is not this the absolute condition imposed by good faith ? 
And could any man suppose we were afterwards to be met 
by a doubt if there were any burdens at all ? And if before 
the enactment of the law, when the sages and prophets of 
the Corn League predicted that the land would be no 
sufferer — that rents would rather rise than fall — prices 
would average 7s. on wheat, where they now average 5s. — 
farmers rather flourish than decay — agricultural wages 
rather increase than diminish — if then Lord John thought 
such concessions of relief to a considerable extent fair and 
reasonable, how much more have they become so now, 
when the distress of the cultivator is acknowledged by 
Lord John himself, and lamented in the speech which is 
delivered from the throne ? Concessions ! First, redac- 
tion on bricks, which benefits certainly urban speculators 
more than it can at present the unhappy landlord, who has 
small heart for building new farm premises ; and now a 
further reduction on timber, which, where the landowner 
has any timber on his property, is another diminution of 
the income from which he is to contribute new barns and 
granaries for the corn, which the farmer trembles while he 
stores ! And this is the way faith has been kept to us, and 
the pledges of two Prime Ministers fulfilled ! 

The true question before us is plain. Will you, or will 
you not, conciliate this great interest, comprising so much 
of your capital — this great class, containing so large a 
share of your population ? Are you to continue to treat 
the producers of bread, in your own country, as an enemy 
whom it is necessary or wise thoroughly and resolutely to 
conquer and put down ; or as a vast element in the com- 
monwealth, with whose claims and opinions it is prudent 
and patriotic to effect some gentle compromise ? And here 
let me observe that, in all important questions which you 



118 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

have safely and durably settled, you have always (and in 
all times and countries judicious statesmen always have) 
shunned to extend too far the victory of one opinion over 
another. It is the principle of compromise, more or less 
extended, upon which you have always gone ; and hence 
the stability of your institutions, and the contrast they pre- 
sent to our impetuous neighbours, the French, who, because 
they push the dogma of the day into the unqualified 
triumph of a party, obtain nothing that far-sighted men 
can consider settled, and leave liberty equally endangered 
by the pressure of the mob and the cannon of the soldier. 
Tour great constitutional changes, where durable, have been 
compromises — your religious Reformation — your Revolu- 
tion of 1688 — your Reform Bill of 1831 — were all compro- 
mises between the extremes of opinion. The sole time 
when you deserted this principle was amidst the passions 
of the Civil War, when you destroyed a [Monarchy, tried 
for a Republic, gained a Dictatorship, passed at once into 
reaction, and welcomed back in Charles the Second a des- 
potism more degrading than that which you had success- 
fully resisted in Charles the First. Beware then, how, in 
dealing with your own countrymen, and in those civil wars 
which are now fought by the pen or in the senate — beware 
how you push, too far, even what you consider just on the 
abstract principle. This total repeal of all Protection, as 
affecting men whom your previous legislation has tutored, 
right or wrong, into believing that without Protection 
there is ruin, is no compromise — it is the extreme opinion 
urged to its extremist point, and, as I have shown, in its 
harshest character ; it has been attended with insult, with 
betrayal, with forfeited promises and broken faith. 

Z±j Lord John Russell, you are fond of quoting Burke : 
your scholarship can appreciate the vast range of his know- 
ledge; your experience of men, the common sense that lies 
under the subtlety of his thought or the glow of his elo- 
quence ; and the natural loftiness of your mind, when it 
rises free from the trammels of party, finds something con- 
genial in that genius which was equally hostile to cruelty 
and meanness, whether they took the plausibilities of power 
or usurped the high attributes of freedom. Dees your 
lordship remember these passages, or can you dispute their 
application ? — 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 119 

" What is the use of discussing men's abstract right to 
food or medicine ? The question is upon the method of 
procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I 
shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the 
physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics. " . . . 

" The science of government being, therefore, so prac- 
tical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a 
matter which requires experience, and even more experi- 
ence than any man can gain in his whole life, however 
sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite 
caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down 
an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for 
ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up 
again without having models and patterns of approved 
utility before his eyes." 

On these two passages I make but two brief comments — 

In the first, Burke would, in deliberating on the method 
of procuring and administering food, call in the aid of the 
farmer rather than the professor of metaphysics. It is the 
farmer whom, in your change, you altogether exclude from 
your council ; and I will show, later, that you have not 
even on your side the aid of the professor of metaphysics, 
though you may have the sanction of some of his obscurer 
disciples. 

Look to the second passage. Can you deny that you 
pull down the whole edifice of protection, which has for 
ages sheltered the farmer, and which has so far answered 
the common purposes of society that, to use the words of 
Sir Robert Peel, "if you convinced us that your most 
sanguine hopes would be realised, that this country would 
become the workshop of the world, would blight, through 
the cheapness of food and the demand for foreign corn, the 
manufacturing industry of every other country, we should 
not forget, amid all these presages of complete happiness, 
that it is under the influence of protection to agriculture, 
continued for two hundred years, that the fen has been 
drained, the wild heath reclaimed, the health of a whole 
people improved, their life prolonged — and all this not at 
the expense of manufacturing prosperity, but concurrently 
with its w r onderful advancement." * 

You pull down this edifice. Where is the " model and 
* Speech of Sir Robert Peel, 1839. 



120 LETTEES TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

pattern of approved utility before your eyes ? " Historian 
that you are, I defy you to find in all history one such 
model and pattern. I turn to you, my dear Mr. Bull, to 
your agents and your family, and I say renovate, alter, 
repair, curtail the edifice — do not wholly pull down. I 
say you are dealing with men, not machines ■*— fellow- 
citizens, not foes ; conciliate, do not crush ; compromise, 
do not conquer. Have you a compromise? You have, 
theoretically, two ; practically, but one. Theoretically, 
you have the option of revising your whole taxation, 
national and local, and readjusting those burdens which, 
under Protection, you laid or continued to enforce on the 
agricultural interest : but so arduous is the task of dealing 
with the most prominent and least disputed of all — the 
Poor-Rate; so injurious to the condition of the working 
class, so favourable to the extension of pauperism, does all 
sound evidence prove it would be to take the rates from 
local control, and add them to national taxation ; and so 
difficult does it appear to be to restore and enforce the 
original law — which, declaring that every man should con- 
tribute to the support of the poor according to his means, 
imposed the relief of pauperism upon personal as well as 
real property — that I believe any systematic and wholesale 
legislation, which should aim at dividing fairly amongst 
the community the burdens which now rest unduly on the 
land, could not be carried into effect. And therefore this 
compromise with the agricultural interest is not practically 
in your power. Your difficulty is not diminished by the 
loud cry of the opposite party, that, in point of fact, no 
such undue burdens exist ; that the land does not bear 
more than its due proportion — some say, even less ; for, if 
your object is to conciliate, the very discussion of such 
questions only frustrates that at which you would aim. 
And — wrangle, cavil, subtleise and special-plead as you 
may — you cannot convince either owner or occupier that 
he does not pay taxes which he does not see paid by his 
neighbour ; that the poor-rate collector does not take out of 
his pocket pounds which the poor-rate collector does not 
take out of the pockets of a man better oh than himself. 
Nay, the very arguments by which you urge the necessity 
of repealing the Corn Law bring before him more strik- 
ingly the injustice of the burden that cripples the competi* 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 121 

tion to which you condemn him. For you say that the old 
proportions of property are altered, that the manufacturing 
wealth increases in a ratio far beyond that of the agricul- 
tural ; and yet this increasing wealth escapes comparatively 
free from the support of the very population that it forces 
to produce it ! It takes the sinews of the human being, 
from childhood to decay, and then throws the human 
machine, when it breaks under its use, upon the alms of that 
very property to which that human machine has yielded no 
return, and towards the war against which it has been used 
as an instrument. Glance at this instance from the evi- 
dence given before the Committee of the House of Lords, 
(on the Burdens on Land). A farmer was examined, and 
speaks thus : — " The poor-rates on Mr. Heathcoat's factory, 
in this parish, have averaged £41 Qs. 9cl. a-year, for the 
last seven years ; on the farm occupied by myself, £58 2s. 
So that I have paid £17 Is. 3d. a-year more than Mr. 
Heathcoat. My rental is <£300 a-year, and the profits 
you can imagine ; Mr. Heathcoat's profits are reputed to 
be £40,000 a-year ! 

jN"ow, observe, if in any time of distress Mr. Heathcoat 
reduces the number of hands he employs in the produce of 
his wealth, the men thus thrown out of work fall, not on 
the factory which their labour has benefited, but on the 
lands of the parish. The farmer maintains not only the 
paupers for whom the land has no labour, but those whom 
the factory flings back upon the land.* Nor, while thus 
oppressed by the Free Trade, and unrelieved by the burden, 
can you convince the agriculturists that this Free Trade, 
which so endangers the returns to his industry in its 
habitual directions, fairly opens to him fresh fields for his 
enterprise and invention. You may tell him there are 
reasons why he should not unrestrictedly sell any sugar he 
may extract from beet-root ; but it is quite clear that those 
reasons are opposed to Free Trade. You may tell him 
there are reasons why he should not grow tobacco ; but he 
sees in France that tobacco is a main element in the profits 

* I cannot here resist quoting the witty " definition of the building called 
a factory," by Henry Brougham, before that illustrious man was a Corn- 
Law repealer — " A large building, erected on a comparatively small piece of 
ground, carrying on the manufacture of two very important articles — cotton 
and paupers'" 



122 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

of the cultivator, and that portions of his land could grow 
quite as good tobacco as that which the labouring popula- 
tion poison the air with in France. And if there are 
reasons why he should not have Free Trade for such ex- 
periment, which his climate does not suit, he replies to you 
that he finds reasons quite as good why Free Trade should 
not be forced on him in the article to which he is con 
demned as the staple of his produce, and for which his 
climate is suited. 

Suppose that the merchant has hitherto had a monopoly 
of the markets in India, and by some change in your com- 
mercial system he is driven from those markets by foreign 
competition. He complains, and you say, " Unjust Man, 
we have done with monopoly ; " he then turns his prows 
towards the North, and you say, "No, there you must not 
deal." "Why ? " " We have permitted to our Colonists 
a monopoly against you." " Towards the West ?" " JSTo, 
my friend, the products of the West do not suit your way 
of business, and for very good reasons ; we have given to 
others a monopoly there, too, for which they pay us a very 
high price ! " Suppose this, and then allow me to ask, 
whether you could continue to read to your merchant a 
lecture on the blessings of Free Trade ? Reverse the case, 
and what the difference, when the farmer sees Free Trade 
give to the foreigner his market in corn, and monopoly ex- 
clude his fields from beet-root and tobacco ? 

In dealing with mankind, I say, as said one who under- 
stood nations well, "that even if burdens are laid on fairly, 
you must convince those who suffer that such burdens 
are fair." I say this without prejudice to the question 
whether the land is or is not disproportionably burdened. 
I am ready, if necessary, to go wholly into that considera- 
tion. And if I do not do so now, it is, first, because I never 
yet met a fair and dispassionate thinker who doubted the 
fact, though he might cavil as to the degree. Secondly, 
because, at the very time the Corn Law was repealed, the 
fact of the burdens was admitted by the Minister who 
repealed it, and the Minister to whom the maintenance of 
the repeal was intrusted. Thirdly, because the promise of 
relief to those burdens accompanied the intimation of their 
repeal ; and, without such promise, I know that many of 
the votes Sir Robert Peel obtained to his change of policy 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 123 

would have been withheld. And we have a right, if yon 
tell ns that we must submit to the hardship, to hold as un- 
challengeable, in poiut of honesty, the pledge that was given 
to us of relief from the burdens acknowledged by those 
who inflicted the hardship. Fourthly, because I here 
argue for the expediency of a compromise ; and compro- 
mise in the way of relief from taxation, be my assertions 
ever so true, and any calculations I might found on them 
ever so accurate, I am convinced that every financier would 
concur with me in considering wholly impracticable. 

The second compromise, and the only one you can actually 
effect, is to deal in some mode with your customs, that, in- 
terfering the least with the good you anticipate from your 
recent experiment — leaving undisturbed your general tariff 
— militating not against its main principle, and recom- 
mended by the great authorities you have assumed as your 
guides, may yet be of some benefit to the agricultural pro- 
ducer, and put him in good heart and good humour to 
befriend the system you have commenced. Such a com- 
promise Lord Derby has proposed, viz., a low fixed duty 
upon wheat and other grain — a tax upon the foreigner for 
the benefit of the native cultivator ; and the profits of that 
tax to go in relief of the most odious burden upon all, 
whether engaged in trade, commerce, agriculture, or manu- 
factures. 

In favour of this low fixed duty as a compromise, I sub- 
mit these considerations to the Free-Trader : — First, That 
it still leaves you the victory for which you so eagerly 
contend — the victory over the abstract principle of Protec- 
tion. I can well conceive a derisive cheer at this sentence. 
" So the principle of Protection you give up ! " My dear 
fellow-citizens, I am not writing for Protection or Free 
Trade as abstract principles ; I am writing for what I 
believe, in my conscience, to be the very existence of a 
generation of human beings, and in deprecation of the 
consequences which the ruin of one race may entail on 
generations yet to come. I believe that my principle is 
right ; but this is no question of School Metaphysics, and 
I will surrender the principle with all my heart, if you will 
aid me to save the men. The principle, then, of such a tax 
is a principle of revenue, drawn from duty on a commodity 
in general use, and introduced into the country from the 



124 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

foreign merchant. It is the same principle you apply to 
tea, to tobacco, to any other article you might desire to 
have free, but to which, for the sake of the revenue, you 
attach fiscal duties. If indirectly it operates as a protection 
to the cultivator, because it happens that we cultivate grain, 
and not tobacco or tea, and thereby effects the compromise 
that it is best for all classes to establish, it is an incidental 
good which you admit in dealing with other articles of 
home production. You derive revenue from duties on 
foreign shoes, boots, gloves, embroidery ; you have a duty 
of 25 per cent, upon artificial flowers, 15 per cent, upon 
foreign silk ; and you defend these duties, not only as 
sources of revenue, but as some aid against foreign compe- 
tition to certain classes of your countrymen. Why deprive 
yourselves of a source of revenue larger than is derived 
from all these duties put together, because it would aid, 
during a fearful strain upon its energies, a Class that com- 
prises at least a fourth of your population ? 

Secondly, the fixed duty carries with it the recommenda- 
tion of high authority among Free-Traders themselves; 
and that, if you gainsay this, you may contradict not me, 
poor Squire and selfish Vampire, but your own authorities, 
I give you the words of the most eminent enemies of the 
old Corn Laws, the most illustrious masters of Political 
Economy. 

Hear, first, Mr. Bicardo — no friend to the Landowner. 
You will see that he admits the policy of the fixed duty, 
contends for its justice, and even intimates his concession 
to a duty of 10s. — double that which Lord Stanley in these 
times has suggested. 

" The growers of corn are subject to some of these pecu- 
liar taxes, such as tithes, a portion of the poor-rate, and 
perhaps one or two other taxes, all of which tend to raise 
the price of corn and other raw produce equal to these 
peculiar burdens. In the degree, then, in which these 
taxes raise the price of corn, a duty should be imposed on 
its importation. If from this cause it be raised 10s. per 
quarter, a duty of 10s. should be imposed on the importa- 
tion of foreign corn, and a drawback of the same amount 
should be allowed on the exportation of corn. By means 
of this duty and this drawback, the trade would be placed 
en the same footing as if it had never been taxed ; and we 



LETTEKS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 125 

should be quite sure that capital would neither be injuri- 
ously, for the interests of society, attracted towards nor 

repelled from it If importation was 

allowed, an undue encouragement would be given to the 
importation of foreign corn, unless the foreign commodity 
were subject to the same duty equal to tithes, or any other 
exclusive tax as that imposed on the home grower." 

Thus says Mr. Bicardo. Hear, next, Mr. Poulett Thom- 
son, afterwards Lord Sydenham, speaking against the Corn 
Laws in 1834: — 

" He concluded that a fixed duty of from 8s. to 10s. the 
quarter, under which foreign corn could at all times come 
into the market of this country at a moderate price, would 
have prevented this occurrence (fluctuation) and the con- 
sequent loss 

" He would not dispute that the Landowners had a claim to 
a certain degree of protection. His right honourable friend 
had quoted Mr. Ricardo as if he was with him, and against 
the imposition of a fixed duty ; but he would find that the 
authority of Mr. Ricardo, was against him on that point. 
Mr. Ricardo proposed the adoption of a certain fixed duty 
as being a full and sufficient compensation to the land- 
owners. Let them adopt that plan. By the adoption of 
such a plan as that of a fixed duty, there was no doubt that 
the revenue would be a gainer, and he would not object to 
appropriate the amount of duty thus received towards 
affording that relief to the landowners to which they should 
prove themselves entitled. " 

But you say, whatever these eminent men may have 
thought then of a fixed duty, in 1846 they would have been 
for the total repeal now enforced on us. Yet surely, if 
there be one person who may guide us as to their probable 
opinion, had they been spared to us in 1846, it is the great 
living disciple and elucidator of Adam Smith and Ricardo, 
the most learned and profound of all our surviving masters 
in the Free-Trade school of this science of Political Eco- 
nomy. Thus says Mr. M'Culloch, writing in 1849, three 
years after the enactment, but before the serious distress 
that has befallen the agriculturist : — 

<k At the same time, we are ready to admit that we 
should have preferred seeing this question settled by impos- 
ing a low fixed duty of 5s., 6s. , or 7s. a quarter on wheat, 



126 LETTE11S TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

and other grain in proportion, accompanied by a propor- 
tionate drawback. We make this statement on general 
grounds, and without any reference to the peculiar bur- 
dens that affect the agriculturists, though these should 
neither be forgotten nor overlooked. In scarce years, a 
duty of this description would fall wholly on the foreigner, 
without affecting prices or narrowing importation ; for in 
such years the prices of corn are wholly determined by 
demand or supply, without reference to the cost of the 
corn, including therein any reasonable duty with which it 
may be charged. The latter is then, in truth, deducted 
from the profits of the foreign grower or merchant ; and 
its repeal would not sensibly affect prices. But while, in 
scarce years, when importation is necessary, the influence 
of a low duty is thus innocuous, it would lessen or prevent 
importation in unusually abundant years, when the home 
supply is sufficient. The drawback by which it is supposed 
to be accompanied would then also come into play, and 
facilitate exportation ; so that their conjoined effect would 
be to hinder the overloading of the market, and conse- 
quently to prevent prices falling so low as to be injurious to 
the agriculturists and those dependent on them. And it must 
be borne in mind that the distress of the agriculturists never 
fails to react on the other classes. When the former are in- 
volved in difficulties, the demand for the products of the loom 
and of our colonial possessions, are proportionally diminished ; 
so that the market is glutted with manufactured goods, 
sugar, &c, as well as with corn. It is, indeed, uniformly 
found that the injury that is thus inflicted on the manufac- 
turing and trading part of the community very much exceeds 
all that they gain by the temporary fall in the price of raw 
produce. It is plainly, therefore, a capital mistake to suppose 
that the duty and drawback now referred to would be advan- 
tageous only to the agriculturists : they would redound quite 
as much to the advantage of the other classes. And though 
this were less certain than it appears to be, still, in a matter 
of such importance as the welfare of agriculture, and of 
those dependent thereon, a wise Government should be ex- 
tremely cautious about taking any step, of the consequences 
of which it is not fully assured." * This, then, is the 
opinion of Mr. M'Culloch on the abstract merits of the 
* M'Culloch's Pol. Econ., pp. 548, 549, 4th edit., p. 49. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 127 

question ; and though I grant that this eminent person 
doubts whether, as " Government had, in 1846, to deal 
with an irritated and unreasoning populace, it might not 
have been better to make an end of the matter than to pro- 
long by any system, however well devised, the pernicious 
trade of agitation ; " yet, as the chief reason he states for 
so preferring concession to wisdom is, that the agricul- 
turists had "little to apprehend" in the change, I think 
we have a fair right, now that, in 1851, the cause for appre- 
hension is proved to be so grave, to appeal to the country 
to decide between " an unreasoning" clamour and the 
principle which this master of the science declares would 
11 not only be for the advantage of the agriculturists, but 
redound quite as much to the advantage of the other classes." 
You tell me, inflexible Repealers, in defiance of Mr. 
M'Culloch, that this moderate fixed duty is a miserable 
boon to the agriculturist, not worth his contending for. 
So much the better for you, if you can effect such a com- 
promise, and secure yourselves, upon terms so easy, against 
the reaction that is always liable to follow extremes. You 
may tell me that this does not carry out your abstract prin- 
ciple to the utmost ; but I have proved to you, at least, 
that the most illustrious asserters of your abstract principle 
have advocated the very compromise thus proposed. And 
if, after all, it does not go to the full length to which you 
would urge your theory, consider, all you who are intelli- 
gent among my manufacturing opponents — consider, I pray 
you, whether in this, as in all other affairs of life, where 
you deal between man and man, you do not gain more, in 
security to what you have obtained, in exemption from 
hostility upon other points affecting your interests, than 
you lose by your trifling concessions ! Reflect, that but a 
very few years ago you would have delightedly hailed the 
compromise now submitted to you. Lord J. Russell tells 
us in the House of Commons, that, had his proposal of an 
85. fixed duty been accepted, the Free-Traders would have 
been satisfied, and the Corn Law League dissolved ! And 
think, too, how you obtained your triumph — by what com- 
bination of circumstances, rare and unprecedented : — by a 
famine in Ireland — the prospect of a famine in England — 
the influence of: a great man now no more — the changed 
opinions of Representatives, excusing change by calcula- 



128 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

tions on prices that have proved erroneous, or the pledges 
of Ministers that have not been redeemed ; regard and 
immber the votes upon the opposite benches, — calculate 
somewhat on the prospect of a majority, in the ensuing 
Parliament, composed of men whom your obstinate refusal 
to listen to a question they deem so vital to their interests 
must make as obstinate as yourselves in regard to your 
own, — recollect that even in this Parliament, upon the 
question that "something should be done for the land," 
you have barely escaped by a Majority of Fourteen,* — 
own that, in the present balance of parties, legislation, 
according to your own principles, is impeded by the rally- 
ing point you leave to all who own that " Something must- 
be done,"— and say whether, as wise and far-sighted men, 
you had not better seize this time to settle a dispute, which, 
believe me, is not settled now, by the consent of your oppo- 
nents to terms more advantageous than those that, but for 
extraordinary circumstances, would, a short time ago, have 
so contented yourselves. 

What say you, John ! am I not right in my counsel ? 
Did ever one great class in your family refuse all terms 
with another, and not live to repent it ? 

I close this letter, to give you time to turn to your His- 
tory : — Do so, and I can doubt not your answer. 

Yours, &c. 



LETTER III. 



But it is said to the agriculturist, " Ton have suffered 
distress before; therefore you must learn to suffer it now: 
you complained when enjoying a high protection duty ; we 
cannot attend to your complaints, if you suffer when that 
dtity is repealed. In 1835, for instance, your average prices 
were as low as now, in 1851. Why tease us to death with 
your lamentations ? " 

O disingenuous, if plausible adversaries, who denies that, 
ever since Triptolemus invented the plough, the agricul- 
turist has been subjected to great casualties and hard 

* A majority which, on Mr. Disraeli's motion, April 11th, (debated since 
the first edition of these Letters,) has been decreased to thirteen. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 129 

trials ? He is engaged in a constant war with the soil and 
the elements, and they will sometimes prove more than a 
match for him. Is that any reason why yon should unfit 
him still more for the struggle ? In 1835, prices were low 
from the abundance of the harvest ; they are low now, be- 
cause you have suddenly brought against the agriculturist 
the granaries of the world. Your argument only goes to 
this — that, because he is liable to temporary distress, there- 
fore you will create for him a distress that ghall be perma- 
nent; and that since he complains of other elements which, 
in certain seasons, conspire against continuous prosperity 
to his labour, he has no right to complain when you add a 
new one which threatens, in all seasons, to render labour 
without hope of its reward. Because a man has groaned 
aloud in a fit of the gout, is it a reason that he should not 
complain if he is dosed to death by ratsbane and arsenic ? 

But competition is to do wonders ! Competition does 
much when the competitors are fairly pitted, and I grant 
that there is some truth in the old boast that, if one 
Englishman is not a match for three Frenchmen, at least 
he will try his best to be so ; but you do not raise the spirit 
— you crush it — if the odds are thoroughly unequal. You 
may stimulate the combative nature of the Englishman if 
you set three Frenchmen against him ; but if, in addition 
to the Frenchmen, you add the Dane, the German, the 
American, the Russian, the Pole, the stoutest Anglo-Saxon 
who ever existed is likely to give up the battle. To tell 
the British agriculturist, whose most triumphant marvels 
of skill have been shown in extracting rich crops from the 
fens of Lincolnshire or the sands of ^Norfolk, that he must 
compete with the most fertile corn soils of the globe — that, 
met at all sides by excisemen and tax-collectors, he must 
compete with men free from those drawbacks on his profits 
— that, having literally thrown upon him the burden of 
two-thirds of all the poor of his country, he must compete 
with men to whom a poor-rate is unknown, and who have 
no check either from the charity of the Legislature or the 
habits of the labourer upon the minimum of wages — is to 
tell him that from which his common sense revolts, and 
which only insults, with the insinuation of cowardice, the 
courage which you deprive of all hope. 

The cotton manufacturer, you say, does not require PrO- 



130 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

tection. Why should the manufacturer of corn? Just 
an egregious query ! If, where ten pieces of cotton were 
demanded before, I ask the cotton manufacturer to pro- 
duce me a hundred, or I must cease to pay him any price 
for the ten pieces that remunerate his labour, he most 
thankfully accepts the order, and the hundred pieces are 
produced. There is no limit to the supply that, by the 
help of the steam-engine and the coal which the mines be- 
neath his own soil afford to the mechanism he employs — 
no limit to the supply that he can yield to your demand ; 
but if I say to the corn manufacturer, the agriculturist, 
" Where you grew five quarters of wheat to your acre, you 
must now grow twenty ; or you cannot be paid the price 
that remunerates the production of the five" — can the 
agriculturist make the same answer ? Can the clod-crusher 
and harrow wring from the land more than the land can 
bear ? Gan the manure that the farmer lays on the soil 
give to the plough the horse-power that coal gives to the 
steam-engine ? The difference between the two is plain 
and obvious. The supply of the cotton pieces is inex- 
haustible, of the acres is limited. The extra demand upon 
the one is wealth, upon the other is ruin. 

" Farm high," you say — " Farm high ! " and there ends 
all your philosophy of relief. To farm high means keep 
plenty of stock, and buy plenty of artificial manure ; in 
other words, increase your gross exjDenditure in order to 
increase your net income — adventure your capital in the 
hope o£ a return. Excellent advice ! As a landowner, it 
is not my interest to gainsay it. But allow, at least, that 
two things are necessary to induce even men so abtuse as, 
in your superior wit, you deem the poor farmer, to follow 
your recommendation. First, you must not diminish the 
capital; and, secondly, you must allow the speculator a 
reasonable hope that a return is likely to follow the expendi- 
ture. But, even if I were to grant assent to a favourite 
saying of yours, that this is but the period of transition, it 
is during that period of transition that you are wasting 
rapidly away the very capital on which you are to depend, 
in order to bring you through it. And I appeal to any 
farmer if it be not true that, in cultivating his land, he is 
now sacrificing his capital. It is not only that the tenant 
has been paying, in some cases all, in nearly every case a 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 131 

large portion, of his rent out of his capital, and not from 
the returns of the farm ; but even yeomen and proprietors 
(I don't mean the mere amateur farming squires, who, with 
the laudable desire of encouraging the breed of stock, and 
trying various experiments on Model Farms, rarely make 
or look to a profit — but proprietors farming as practical 
farmers, and with no rent to pay) find that the first drain 
that is needed is the — drain on their bankers. 

It is frightful to think of the degree of agricultural 
capital lost for ever to the country, at the very time in 
which you tell us that capital is our only chance of ultimate 
salvation. 

And if this high farming be indeed the sure remedy, 
how happens it that those very districts where high farm- 
ing has been carried to its acme, has extorted the admira- 
tion of foreigners, and ranks amongst the triumphs of 
national enterprise and skill— how comes it that those are 
precisely the districts from which the complaints are the 
loudest, and their justice most conceded by the Govern- 
ment itself ? The Lothians, Norfolk, Lincolnshire — surely 
you cannot say to the cultivators of these districts, when 
they tell you that they are cultivating at a loss, and that 
they anticipate their ruin: — " Gentlemen, go home and 
farm high! " 

I remember that in 1846 I predicted to the Lincolnshire 
agriculturist that he, above most cultivators, would suffer, 
and that his suffering would tell quickly upon the labour- 
ing population, where, in other counties, the distress of 
the farmer would be slow in reaching the labourer. " It 
is," I then said, "in proportion to the cost upon the soil, 
and not to the quality of the produce grown upon it, that 
the farmer will suffer by a fall in price below profits. You, 
who produce such crops by artificial manures, who consume 
so much upon guano and bones, you will be the first to 
find how small and minute would be the benefit of any 
reduction in rent compared to your great cost in culti- 
vating. And as free competition must affect the gross 
profits of your land, so the larger the expenses in propor- 
tion to the profits, why, the greater you must be the 
sufferers in any great fall of prices. Suppose A. B. has a 
certain farm, for which he pays £300 a-year, and has for 
his own profit as tenant £300 a-year also, but his land, 

k 2 



13-2 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

being not originally fertile, is brought into high cultivation 
by artificial means, and it therefore requires an expendi- 
ture of three times the net profit, viz. £900, in order to 
yield the said rent to the landlord, and the said return to 
the farmer: in all, the sum risked in the cultivation is 
£1500 a-year. But suppose C. D. has another farm, on 
which he too pays £300 a-year ; has also £300 a-year for 
his personal profit ; but, the soil being light and fertile, 
requires an expenditure of only £400 to realise the said 
rent, and return the said farmer's profit : in all, the sum 
risked on this farm is but £1000 a-year. 

It is perfectly clear, therefore, that the loss occasioned 
by low prices on these two farms — though at the . same 
rent, and yielding at fair prices the same average profit — ■ 
is not the same : the loss upon one affects an annnal 
expenditure of £1500, upon the other of only £1000. 

And it is clear, also, that in this case the greater loss 
may fall upon the tenant who farms the highest. Now, if 
the " strain on his capital compels him to withdraw a cer- 
tain amount of the labour he had hitherto employed, or if 
he devotes more attention so some produce demanding less 
labour than wheat, it is clear, also, that the labourer will 
be affected by the loss on the higher farming in proportion 
to the greater loss of the farmer." It has proved thus : — 
And while the farmer of Lincolnshire is so great a sufferer, 
you find also that in Lincolnshire the President of the 
Board of Trade himself confessed that pauperism had 
largely increased. 

We have been told that such lands, not paying the cost 
of culture, should go out of cultivation. But much of 
these lands, in the triumph of art over soil, is the very 
perfection of husbandry. Condemn the fens of Lincoln- 
shire, the sands of Norfolk, to go out of cultivation ! It 
would be to condemn at once enterprise and skill — con- 
demn the noble conquest of man over matter. " Return to 
pasture ! " cry some. Return to comparative barbarism ! 
Return to pasture, and throw hundreds and thousands of 
labourers out of employ ! — diminish the product that is the 
wealth of your country ! — and relinquish large tracts from 
which the industry and art of successive generations have 
extracted the food of men — to such desolate sheep walks 
and rabbit-haunts as a Ceorl of old might have tended for 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 133 

Athelstar.es and Cerdics ! Is it you, the friends of labour 
and civilisation, of the progress of nations — is it for you 
to say this ? Let me not think it. 

Farm high ! Farm high ! I agree "with. you. Only 
help, only encourage us to do so ! Away with the fear of 
throwing land out of cultivation, and back into pasture. 
Away with it, I say ! But, Manufacturers ! if we must 
throw aside the staff, and yet keep the fardel, do not ask 
us to perform in a day the pilgrimage which it has taken 
your class years to accomplish. The last protection was 
not taken from cotton itself until, by the avowal of the 
Cotton Manufacturers, it was no longer required ! Farm 
high ! Farm high ! Yes, but do not forget, that before you 
affected farming operations by your Corn Law, you affected 
them by the tariff introducing foreign cattle and meat. 
And I am sure that I speak the sentiments of a very large 
proportion of the most spirited agriculturists when I say, 
that you could not have more interfered with the success of 
the experiment which was to depend npon high farming to 
bring us through the "transition " consequent on the re- 
peal of the Corn Law, than by the previous discouragement 
to high farming in the loss upon cattle. Many a high 
farmer, dependent on his turnip and bean crops, looked less 
to the yield of corn than the price of his mutton and beef. 
1 do not say that the sudden fall in the price of meat is not 
a great boon to the consumer ; but it obviously entailed a 
heavy loss on the farmer, on the very article which con- 
stitutes the pith and root of high farming, and at the very 
time when he had need of all his resources to face the prices 
to which grain has been since subjected. The object of 
the high farmer is to sell off every year large quantities of 
fat meat ; without this, it is not high farming. And if he 
does this at a loss, why, of course, his loss must be great 
in proportion to his obedience to your command, " Farm 
high, and don't trouble us." * 

Nevertheless, I neither hope nor ask that you should 

* Thus Adam Smith, in one of his most valuable chapters, (Book I. Chap. 
XL,) proves briefly and clearly the effect of the price of cattle upon the cul- 
tivation of land, and says, "*0f all the commercial advantages, however, 
which Scotland has derived from the union with England, this rise in the 
price of cattle is perhaps the greatest. It has not only raised the value 
<5f all highland estates, but it has been perhaps the principal eause of tb« 
improvement of the low eo^ntryt" 



134 LETTEES TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

alter the tariff ; and by degrees I believe that the farmer 
will, more than he now expects, readjust his speculations 
on cattle. If he must sell the fat cattle cheaper, he can 
also buy the lean cheaper ; and to the farmer now entering 
on business, there will be far less demand on his capital in 
the first purchase of stock. But as yet the difference be- 
tween the purchase of the lean cattle (especially bullocks), 
and the price at which the farmer sells them when fattened, 
does not, spite of all reductions on oilcake and forage, cover 
the costs of feed — as yet, therefore, he still is a loser in 
proportion to the capital so employed. And for the genera- 
tion with whom you are dealing, it is impossible to deny 
that the fall in the price of meat * was a terrible blow to 
the resources with which high farming was to meet the 
repeal of the Corn Law. Excellently well has the terse old 
Satirist described the present condition of the farmer who 
cultivates with spirit, and sells at a loss : — 

-"Jam crescit ager, jam. crescit ovile, 



Jam dabitur — jam jam ! donee deceptus et exspes 
Nequicquam fundo suspiret nummus in imo ! 

" Now teems the field, and now augments the fold ; 
What gains await ! what harvests shall be told ! 
Now — the return — now — now ! ' Alas ! ' he sighs, 
* So low the prices — hang it, they must rise ! ' 
' Try Lawes' manure — ' .... He tries it. ' Well the grain ? ' 
' Good.' — ' Then why sad ? ' 'It don't manure Mark Lane ! ' 
Thus the crops flourish, thus the funds decay, 
Till the last pound — improves itself away ! " 

No ! Just before the change in your policy there was, 
indeed, every prospect that could gratify those who advocate 
agricultural improvement. Under this system of protection, 
now so condemned, British agriculture had made the most 
rapid and striking advances. Mr. Porter, in adducing his 
calculations of our produce in grain, and in showing in 
how small a degree this country had hitherto been de- 
pendent on foreigners, in ordinary seasons, for a due supply 
of our staple article of food, says : — " It is not, however, 
with this view that these calculations are brought forward, 
but rather to prove how exceedingly great the increase of 
agricultural production must have been to have thus effect- 

* The large importation of cured meat has had a greater effect upon prices 
here than the importation of cattle. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 135 

tially kept in a state of independence a population which 
has increased with so great a degree of rapidity." 

Just before the change, nothing conld equal the zeal and 
cordiality with which farmers and squires were entering 
into all that could increase our produce, and improve our 
agricultural art. And now how inert and lifeless are all 
the discussions which then provoked so keen and animated 
an interest ! I appeal to any man conversant with agricul- 
tural meetings, or what is contemptuously called " the 
Agricultural Mind," whether all that relates to scientific 
experiment has not receded before the dread of this com- 
petition which you tell ns should stimulate science. Nay, 
even those vexed questions between squire and tenant, out 
of which our common enemies would make subjects of 
quarrel, such as the removal of superfluous field and hedge- 
row timber, the fair opening of land to sun and air, the 
destruction of rabbits and hares, and, where guarantee is 
given of the capital and spirit of the farmer, the system of 
securer tenure by lease — all questions that were about then 
amicably to be settled, are now comparatively lost sight of 
in the general feeling, " Pooh, these are trifles \ can we 
continue to live by the land we till ? " 

I say, fearlessly, that whereas a moderate competition, 
such as a fixed duty might produce, would have been a 
stimulant to improvement : improvement has been arrested 
by a competition carried to an extent which does not 
stimulate energy, but engender despondence. 

"But we never contended, never expected," say my Lord 
John Russell and our sympathising enemy, the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, " that either landowner or occupier would 
not go through a sharp period of distress ; ultimately both 
will profit by the general prosperity of all classes, and the 
increase of population. The weal of the country requires 
the change from the old system. This is a Period of 
Transition; you must go through it. Hold your tongues, 
and Heaven be with you ! " 

A Period of Transition. Well, but what to ? To the 
ultimate growth of our population ? A prospect pleasing, 
nc doubt, but exceediugly distant. The generation that 
complains passes to the grave, while the generation that is 
to redress the complaint emerges from the nursery. We 
have not only to look to the growth of population here, 



136 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

but the growth of corn throughout that small occupant of 
space commonly called The Earth. And while we are 
waiting for the little Johns and Thomases at present sup- 
plied at the pap-boat, and with whom, as they rise inch by 
inch, profits are to rise also, we are to continue to sell at a 
loss, pay for the paupers our ranks will recruit, and the 
gaols to which the transition is hurrying our footsteps — 
transition to penury, to destitution, to despair, disaffection, 
hatred of the Legislature which dooms us, and indifference 
to the safety of the State, whose prosperity is invoked as 
the cause of our own destitution. For this general pros- 
perity is unwisely and invidiously held up to our eyes in 
contrast to our sufferings. And when you tell Hodge, the 
farmer, that he ought to be extremely well satisfied because 
Smith, the calico-printer, is growing a rich man at his 
expense, my own private and honest opinion is, that you 
are making Hodge a very dangerous enemy to Smith. I 
confess, that if I had to reconcile a man to the contempla- 
tion of bankruptcy, I should not say to him, " My dear 
sir, be comforted with your present state of transition by 
the gratifying survey of your neighbour's prosperity. You 
grow thin, it is true ; but how plump is the gentleman next 
door ? You, to save yourself from the Gazette, are selling 
off at dead loss your stock in trade ; but then, how agree- 
able it is for others to buy your articles a bargain ! Think 
of that, and be consoled. Instead of selfishly regarding 
your own poverty, fix your delighted eyes on the wealth 
of all the rivals who are buying for sixpence what it cost 
you a shilling to produce." Human nature is human 
nature ; and that is not the way to soothe its sorrows or 
soften its passions. But, you say, this general prosperity 
will ultimately benefit us as a part of the public. We deny 
that this prosperity can long be general, if you continue to 
destroy what all true political economists acknowledge to 
be the primary source of the national wealth. A transition 
state ! — a transition in which so vast an interest is con- 
cerned ! You allow it must be one of distress ; will you do 
nothing to render it less violent and abrupt ? I have 
granted your premises, that a change in the old law was 
rendered necessary. I have no desire to return to large 
protective duties, or the principle of a sliding-scale. But 
m there no medium ? Would not a moderate fixed duty 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 137 

secure the true objects at which, your policy would aim, and 
gradually bring about the transition to which it is neces- 
sary to subject so, large a class of your population, so im- 
mense an amount of your national wealth ? The transition, 
even then, will be sharp enough. But you will at least 
give to it the consoling effect of your obvious desire to 
sympathise and conciliate. You will appear to be dealing 
amicably with your own countrymen. You will appear to 
remember that when you say, " Sacrifice your interests to 
those of the community," the men you address can be 
counted as millions in that community itself ! By a fixed 
duty you obtain — I rejDeat it — the great principle you con- 
tend for. The sliding-scale checks or forbids importation 
at certain prices. The fixed duty leaves the market always 
open, with but a slight toll on the foreigner — a toll to 
which he will soon, when it is regular and unalterable, con- 
form his dealings, and will as little operate against his 
bringing his corn habitually to your ports, as the toll which 
the farmer pays on the turnpike to the neighbouring town 
operates against his conveying his droves there for sale. 
A low fixed tax upon the seller, to whom you extend a new 
range of customers, will never be found to interfere with 
his business ; it diminishes a little his profits, and the com- 
petition to which you admit a world will compel him to 
take that diminution to himself, rather than add to the cost 
of the article — except in times when prices are nnusually 
low. I say, indeed, that a small fixed duty, accompanied 
by a proportional drawback, must be better for all classes 
of labour ; for it must render prices much less fluctuating 
than that total repeal of all duty which you have enacted. 
And great, yet brief, fluctuation in prices is the worst de- 
moraliser you can create in the habits of your people. In 
whatever country corn has been imported free, I will under- 
take to show that fluctuations have been more extreme than 
ever they have been in England, even under the worst 
operations of the old excessive duties ; * whereas — I here 

* Whatever the faults of the old Com Law, fluctuations in price, taken by 
a series of years, were less extreme in England than in any other country. 
From 1815 to 1838, the highest variation in England was 140 per cent. ^V'e 
all cried out pretty loudly at this variation ; but what was it elsewhere dur- 
ing the same period r 

In Bordeaux 260 per cent, 

In liottenkm , < < . 5 295 ,, 



188 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

once more quote Mr. M'Culloch — " it may, we think, be 
concluded, on unassailable grounds, that were the ports 
constantly open under a moderate fixed duty and an 
equivalent drawback, extreme fluctuation of prices would 
be very rare." 

"But," say our adversaries, "why should we think that 
these prices don't pay the cost of culture ? Did not you 
grumble years ago at prices which now seem a dream ? 
At the end of the war, did you not contend for eighty 
shillings a quarter, where you would now be rejoiced to 
contemplate fifty ? " 

And that cry comes from gentlemen who call themselves 
political economists ! Why, what, according to your theory, 
is the origin of rent ? — (I mean in the scientific sense of 
the word.) Does it not always presuppose " some anterior 
soil for which no rent is paid, as a test of comparison? " 
"Is it not the excess of produce upon any given quality of 
soil, by comparison with another quality worse than itself? " 
Thus, "as inferior land is brought into cultivation, rent 
rises, and with rent prices," — "the higher price of corn 
being caused by the necessity under which every increasing 
population is placed of cultivating inferior land, or of being 
starved." 

Well, then, during the war, every inducement was given 
to bring under cultivation lands previously waste. It was 
the avowed object of the Legislature to encourage to the ut- 
most the home production of food. Vast tracts of land were 
thus reclaimed and tilled — an immense capital thus buried 
in the soil. Necessarily, prices rose at that time, assisted 
by a long depreciation of the currency ; capital was invested 
on the calculation of such prices ; and while the expense of 
bringing into tillage fens and heaths was at its height, no 

In Prussia Proper . . . . 212 per cent. 
In Brandenburg .... 248 ,, 

In Saxony _ 269 „ 

In "Westphalia . . . . 334 „ 

Any comparison between protected England and unprotected Holland, as 
to fluctuations, was so in favour of the former that the Free-Traders were 
forced to push to the extreme an explanation, that it was because England 
was protected that the prices in Holland so fluctuated ; — an argument that, 
so exaggerated, is obviouly untenable. In Athens, under free importation, 
fluctuations to 300 per cent, were common. And during those centuries, 
when in England grain was unprotected, variations were so great that there 
were seasons when even the middle class could not purchase bread. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 139 

doubt the farmer really required much, higher remunerative 
prices to sustain his engagements, and save him from 
bankruptcy, than at a period when this inferior land had 
been rendered artificially fertile, and produced, perhaps, 
thirty bushels per acre where it bad before produced ten. 
I believe it to be perfectly true that 80-5. then would have 
been required to remunerate the farmer, where now 50s. 
might suffice. But the Corn Law of 1815, in forbidding 
free importation till home-grown wheat reached that price, 
was no doubt most absurd and impolitic ; it held out a 
hope that could not be realised. Two years of extraordi- 
nary bigb prices — 1817 and 1818 — induced rasb and sudden 
returns to the inferior tillages, before gradually aban- 
doned. Bold risks of fresh capital in agricultural im- 
provements, " for improvements almost always follow a rise 
in prices," and the increased supply thus obtained, combined 
with plentiful seasons, sunk the price of wheat six years 
afterwards (in 1824) to an average of 43s. 3d. I do not 
argue for duties like these, nor duties that are based on a 
similar system ; but it is not the less true that the Legis- 
lature, during the war, had encouraged such applications 
of capital to husbandry as high prices for a certain period 
(till the return to the capital began to show itself) alone 
could repay — and that large numbers of farmers were left 
broken and bankrupt by the energy and enterprise which 
(honour to their spirit, and, alas, for their calamities!) 
added millions upon millions to the wealth of their 
country.* Very different are the circumstances under 
which the farmer now assesses the average of bis remune- 
rative prices. The present race of agriculturists are 
profiting by the improvements effected and the sacrifices 
undergone by their predecessors. You have no longer to 

* " The progress of agricultural improvement, which, during the late war, 
had been extremely rapid, was retarded for a few years by the sudden and 
heavy fall of prices that took place after the peace ; but since 1825, it has 
been rapid beyond all former precedent. Estimating the increase of popula- 
tion in Great Britain since 1770 at eight millions, and taking the average 
animal expenditure of each individual on agricultural produce at £8, it will 
be seen that the immense siun of sixty-four millions a-year has been added 
to the value of the agricultural produce of Great Britain since 1770." — 
M'CulIoch's Appendix to Smith's Wealth of Nations— Art. Com Laws 
and Corn Trade. And it is the class that, in less than a century, en- 
riched the nation by sixty-four millions a-year, which is to be represented 
as possessing an interest adverse to the community ! 



140 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

calculate the first cost of bringing waste lands under tillage, 
but the after cost of maintaining them ; and if you take soils 
brought into the finest cultivation, from which now all is ob- 
tained that can be wrung from them, and find that, despite 
all that the economists effected by the tariff, the present 
prices cannot pay for the cost, what prospect remains but 
the retrogression of husbandry, or the ruin of at least the 
generation that have buried their substance in the furrows 
traced by the ploughshare, and to whom "persisting is as 
fatal as give o'er ? " 

Here, my dear John, arise a new crowd of opponents ; 
for while the more popular and numerous sect of our ad- 
versaries rejoice in their convictions that prices must, on 
the long run, continue at least thus low, another, more 
serene and lofty — disdaining what Mr. Sidney Herbert desig- 
nates " the clap-trap cry of cheap bread" — reply, "But why 
deem that the repeal of the Corn Law will have this effect 
upon prices ? Why believe that there is any connection 
between the prices you suffer from, and the importation we 
invite ? This year there are exceptional causes at work, 
et cetera ! et cetera !« Plough away, and sow on ! Depend on 
it, that, take an average of years, all things will come right, 
and prices be no lower than they were before the change."* 

Thus asserts my Lord Grey — an authority that I always 
hear with respect, and question with diffidence ; for Lord 
Grey is an original thinker, no parrot repeater of phrases, 
and certainly no trite dealer in clap-traps. But while he 
maps out the air, I place before me the chart of the world; 
and, without pausing to inquire if the causes of agricultural 
distress are this year exceptional or not, I see on that chart 
all reason to think that every year fresh causes must rise 
as the foreigner brings fresh lands into tillage, opens new 
roads to the sea, and widens the range of the taxless and 

* In an average of years I don't doubt that there will be found, under 
wholly unlimited importation, sudden, brief, and excessive rises in price ; 
but these will be found more hurtful than profitable to the generality of 
farmers. They will profit only monied speculators, with other resources than 
their land wherefrom to meet periodical payments, whether of rents, rates, or 
tithes, and weekly payments of labour. They may come at a time when the 
general farmer has nothing to sell, and operate only against him in what he 
has to buy and to pay away. They may help the landlord in keeping up his 
rents, and the clergyman in his corn commutation, by a reference to averages j 
but to the farmer they will be worse than uselessi 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 141 

greedy competitors, with whom your poor farmers, dear 
John, are to sharpen scythe and wit to contend. I have 
said before, that the prospect of such competition, wholly 
unmitigated, does not stimnlate the British producer — it 
only disheartens him. Bat it is clear whom it does stimu- 
late, and that is the — Foreigner * And when I have been 
told that among these special causes is the importation 
from France, which your wise men did not choose to foresee 
— why, I know as a fact that, the moment you opened your 
ports, you suddenly and marvellously increased in France 
that impetus in agricultural improvement which you as 
suddenly checked at home; that a large increase of corn as 
pure surplus over habitual consumption has been obtained, 
and is in active progression on the lands of that country ; 
that whatever France wants not for its own population it 
will sell, no matter the price, for all beyond consumption 
is gain ; and sell here, for this is its only market for the 
surplus your bribe has created. 

"No matter," says my Lord John; " be the prices of 
corn high or low, all I contend for is, that it should be the 
natural price !" — And therewith he is cheered. 

Oh, my Lord John, that sophism might do very well for 
the mere tyros in political economy, who exchange all 
knowledge of the complex relations of men for the pedantry 
of set terms and phrases ; but is it worthy a statesman of 
your rank ? 

Natural price ! — why, what is the natural price ? (id est, 
the central price to which other prices are continually 
gravitating). Adam Smith states it thus: — "When the 
price of any commodity is neither more nor less than what 
is sufficient to pay the rent of the land, the wages of the 
labour, and the profits of the stock employed in raising, 
preparing, and bringing it to market according to their 
natural rates, the commodity is then sold for what may be 
called its natural price." If that is what your lordship 
means by a natural price, give us that, and we are satisfied 
— it is exactly what we contend for. But if by natural 
price you mean, that, by the introduction of a foreign 
element, prices are to be reduced below their cost, such ceases 
at once to be the natural price, scientifically treated ; for 
the natural price means, as Adam Smith proceeds to define 
it — what it costs the person who brings it to market, in- 



142 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

eluding his profit at the ordinary rate of profits — where ? 
Five thousand miles off ? In Poland or Russia ? — ISTo ! — 
" In his neighbourhood." * If you reply, " I mean by a 
natural price that to which the competition, not of the 
neighbour, but of the foreigner, five thousand miles off, 
drives you down," I reply again, that if that is what you 
mean, by the natural price — if you forget or disdain the 
fact that the natural price varies in different communities 
according to the varying degree of labour (i.e. capital) 
employed to produce it — then, I say, with the natural 
price, as you esteem it, give us at least a natural — taxa- 
tion ! 

A Latin author has pithily said :— 

" Life is like swimming— lie fares the best who carries least weight about 
hiin." 

When Leander swam across the Hellespont, no doubt he 
was in puris naturalibus ; but let us suppose that some ex- 
perimental philosopher, a lover of Nature, coaxed a rival 
to swim against Leander, burthened with tunic and cloak, 
two great stones in his pocket, and a couple of paupers 
tied to his back, I don't think it would have been quite 
fair for the sage to say to the rival, " Swim away, my good 
friend ; I have no doubt that you'll outswim Leander; but 
whether you do, or whether you don't, all I can say is, that 
I'll not lend you a cock-boat, nor throw you a tub, for 
there's nothing so natural as swimming." 

"Natural ! yes," the poor rival might gasp, ere he "gra- 
vitated to the centre" — in other words, went to the bottom 
— "natural to that fellow Leander, for he has nothing but 
nature to carry. But I've got a tunic and cloak, two great 
stones in my pockets, and two paupers as heavy as lead on 
my back. Is that the natural way to swim over the Helle- 
spont ? " 

Leander gains the shore ; that is natural ! The com- 
petitor is drowned ; that also is natural ! The philosopher 
contemplates the result with philanthropical pleasure, and 
walks off to his dinner, saying, " What stimulates exertion 
like rivalry ? But, Jupiter ! how could you suffer that 
man to be drowned in gravitating to the centre ? There is 
nothing so natural as swimming ! " 

* Adam Smith, Wealth of 'Nations ', Booki., c. 7. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 143 

"Well, well! Talk as you will," cry those gentlemen, 
who only think of a farmer as an abstract proposition, and 
who ha^e the same vague idea of a landlord that the poets 
had of a harpy — " Talk as you will ; if the landed interest 
does suffer, and very likely it does, it is all one to the 
farmer. Mr. Ricardo, a great thinker, and a very eminent 
stockbroker, and therefore, of course, practically acquainted 
with all details upon farming, assures us that the farmer 
himself, honest fellow, can't be any ways injured. It is 
only a loss to the landlords. They must lower their rents; 
and there will be an end of all grievance." 

Happy, indeed, could the question be so easily settled ! 
Yet, even then, not so light an affliction to the community 
itself as these gentlemen too rashly imagine. Reduction 
of rents cannot happen without the depreciation of the 
property from which the rents are derived — a depreciation 
of so vast a proportion of the real property of the country 
— a depreciation of the land throughout Great Britain and 
Ireland ! Would that be so paltry an evil ? Would the 
evil affect the landlord alone ? Does he not spend these 
' rents of his amongst the community ? Can you impoverish 
the man who spends money without impoverishing those 
upon whom he spends it ? When you talk of this reduc- 
tion so lightly, do you sufficiently consider that a reduction 
of rents is a very different thing in amount from a dimi- 
nution, nominally the same, on an income derived from the 
Funds ? and how largely what may seem but a moderate 
reduction must operate on the surplus the landlord has to 
spend upon trade ? Suppose the landlord gives back to 
his tenants 10 per cent, on his gross rental : when you 
consider all his ordinary drawbacks as a landowner — the 
tithes that he pays for the grounds, &c. in his own occupa- 
tion — his own poor-rates, and other local burdens — the in- 
cumbrances (I will not say mortgages, but such as probably 
some jointure or annuity, provision for younger children, 
&c.) with which most estates are more or less charged, that 
10 per cent, on his gross rental will probably amount to at 
least 20 per cent, on his net income.* And he must be an 
imprudent and reckless vampire indeed if he do not in- 

* I do not believe there are ten properties in a hundred where a reduction 
of 10 per cent, on the gross rental could be set down at so low a figure aa 
20 per cent, on the net income. 



144 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

stantly reduce his dealings with his neighbour, and spend 
so much the less upon some other classes of the community. 
But if it should come to a time when the landlord must 
reduce on his gross rental 25 per cent., and must face 
the enormous effect which that would have on his net in- 
come, what trade in the kingdom would not sensibly feel 
the loss of so large and necessary a retrenchment of expen- 
diture upon the part of the landed proprietors of the 
country ? That a considerable proportion of proprie- 
tors would go abroad is a natural supposition ; and, in 
addition to the pecuniary loss thus entailed on the general 
community, there would also be that social loss in our 
rural districts occasioned by numerous absentees amongst 
a class whose members, whatever their faults, have never 
been accused by any reasonable and fair antagonist of in- 
difference to the welfare of those who live immediately 
around them. 

And what is this class of men, whose affliction it is so 
pleasant to contemplate ? What injury have they inflicted 
on our social system, or what inroads have they made on 
our freedom, that we should cry with complacency, u No 
evil ; they alone are the victims ? " They are the men of 
whom all true political economists have spoken with grateful 
reverence ; whose prosperity the fathers of the science have 
regarded as the paramount interest in the State ; they are 
men to whom the history of this land assigns the chief 
merit when a tyrant was to be humbled, or a f oeman defied. 
" While," says thus, with noble truth, a Free-Trader him- 
self, " while other aristocracies have been the sycophants of 
courts, they have borne the chief burdens of the State ; 
they have given to the State their service, their blood, and 
their treasure." # Take we the loftiest in birth and pos- 
sessions, are they banded together, like oligarchs in Venice, 
as the opponents to progress ; or, like those Greek nobles 
justly branded by Aristotle, have they entered into vows 
against the Demos — the people ? No : wherever you turn 
to our records, in the front of each march towards social 
improvement and political freedom, your chiefs have been 
ever the landed proprietors of England, or the children 
whom they have reared. Through the cycle of progress 
they stand out in each era — Magna Charta, Protestant Re- 

* Speech cf the Et. Hon. Sidney Herbert, Feb. 9, 1851. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 145 

formation, the first resistance to Charles the First, the mar- 
tyrdom under Charles the Second, the Revolution of 
1688, Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Bill — in each the 
pioneers and achievers have been the sons of the soil. And 
even where, as in this very repeal of the Corn Law, their 
virtual representatives in the Upper Chamber have yielded 
from what you assert to be fear, the fear at least was gene- 
rous and noble — the fear of patriots and citizens — lest they 
might seem to oppose what the statesman they trusted had 
told them the people demanded, and hazard the peace of 
their country by even a suspicion that their policy could 
be debased to their pecuniary interests. And who, in this 
victory, on which you now plume yourselves, who were the 
chiefs before a Peel was converted, or a Cobden arose ? 
Who ? A Villiers, a Fitzwilliam, a Spenser, a Russell, a 
Seymour, a Howard. And a glorious thing it is for Eng- 
land that the aristocracy thus never stands distinct and 
apart in one phalanx for interest and privilege ; that it is 
so indissolubly fused and commingled with all shades of 
the people, that men as powerful and noble are found on 
the popular side as can grace the patrician : and when you 
would seize, as some tangible substance to confront and 
oppose, the aristocratic element in our civilisation, it escapes 
and eludes you, lost in the free air that you breathe, or but 
seen in the light that encircles you ! 

Yet it is not the titled aristocracy of our order from whom 
you derive the more ordinary social advantages ; it is rather 
the men by whom the loss that you so placidly contemplate 
will be chiefly felt — the smaller proprietors, amongst whom 
is subdivided a far greater share of the land ; who reside, 
for the most part, on the domains that they improve, 
amongst the population that their surplus immediately 
supports or enriches ; the class that we call the Gentry, 
who in other countries are ISTobles — in this, more proud of 
their place with the Commons. It is they who communi- 
cate to the middle class in which they hold station that 
hard^ patriotism which is inseparably connected with 
attachment to the soil, the notions of honour, of stout in- 
dependence, of just pride of character, of contempt for all 
meanness, that constitute what we mean by the word, for 
which the tongue of no other land has a synonym, Gen- 
tleman. For myself, I hold it my proudest distinction to 

L 



146 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

belong by habit and profession to a class even nobler than 
they- — and to which they have largely contributed — the 
Labourers of Literature ; but, next to that honour, I am 
not ashamed to confess the pride which I cherish that by 
birth and rearing I belong to the owners of Land. And if 
in my childhood I was ever reminded of the centuries in 
which my forefathers had dwelt on the soil, it was only to 
impress on me the lesson of deeper love to my country, and 
warm me to that ambition to render her service, and link 
my name with her language, which has coloured my life 
and dictated my labours. 

To the class of gentry the words of the sternest of all 
political economists emphatically apply : — " It is also in a 
peculiar manner the business of those whose object it is to 
ascertain the means of raising human happiness to its 
greatest height, to consider which is that class of men by 
whom the greatest happiness is enjoyed. It will not pro- 
bably be disputed that they who are raised above solicitude 
for the means of subsistence and respectability, without 
being exposed to the vices and follies of great riches ; the 
men of middling fortunes ; in short, the men to whom 
society is indebted for its greatest improvements, are the 
men who, having their time at their own disposal, freed 
from the necessity of manual labour, subject to no man's 
authority, and engaged in the most delightful occupations, 
obtain, as a class, the greatest sum of human enjoyment. 
For the happiness, therefore, as well as the ornament of 
our nature, it is peculiarly desirable that a class of this de- 
scription should form as large a proportion of the com- 
munity as possible. For this purpose it is absolutely neces- 
sary that population should not, by a forced accumulation 
of capital, be made to go on till the return to capital from 
the land is very small. To enable a considerable portion of 
the community to enjoy the advantages of leisure, the return 
to capital should be large." * 

Mr. Mill is here arguing on the proportions of population 
and capital ; but the argument holds equally good to the 
object in view — viz., a return of capital from the land : and 
whether that return be diminished by a law of nature or a 
law of Parliament, the same evil is created, so far as affects 
the happiness of society. 

* Mill, Elements of Political Economy. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 147 

But would, indeed, that the loss were, or could be con- 
fined to the landowner ! Can any man go into one country 
market, or one farmer's club, and still adopt so prepos 
terous a fallacy ? 

Believe me, that farmers, whatever contempt may be 
entertained for their understanding, have the same know- 
ledge where the shoe pinches, which characterises all 
human beings who stand upon shoe-leather. To use an 
Italian proverb — 

f ' The tongue touches where the tooth aches." 

And were it but a question for the landlord, the rural 
districts would resound, not with cries of Protection, but 
entreaty or clamour for the reduction of rent. Yet who 
does not know that the most ardent of Protectionist land- 
lords scarcely represents the passionate fervour of the 
occupier ; that, obstinate as you may think the county 
members in Parliament, they rather repress than excite 
the impatient groan of their constituents ! and that, 
wherever the corn-law agitator has now the satisfaction to 
point to some rancour professed by the farmers against 
the landlords, it is where the farmers contend that the 
landlords do not sufficiently enter into their grievance, and 
can never sufficiently participate their loss ? 

Any one in the least acquainted with the principle upon 
which farm rents are assessed, must know how little any 
possible reduction of rent can meet the depression com- 
plained of in the price of agricultural produce. I will 
endeavour to put this clear before the reason of the un- 
initiated. 

We have nothing here to do with the scientific theory of 
rent ; and I suspect that many popular errors, which Bicardo 
would have been the first to condemn, have arisen from 
confounding the distinction between rent, scientifically 
defined, and rents, as practically existing.* 

* No writer, perhaps, is more subjected to dangerous misinterpretation by 
inconsiderate readers than Mr. Eicardo. He is constantly applying scienti- 
fically, or according to his peculiar use of terms, words that convey to the 
general reader totally different meanings. Thus, in his whole Chapter on 
Profits, upon a matter of the most yital importance, he has misled many into 
opinions wholly at variance with positive facts. "Why ? Because, as Mr, 
M'Culloch remarks, "he did not in his investigations in that chapter, 
understand the term in the sense in which it is understood in the ordinary 
business of life. In his own point of view, his doctrine with respect to 

L 2 



148 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

Rent is a thing unknown in a newly- settled country — 
nay, in a country where only the best soils are cultivated. 
It begins when cultivation is extended to inferior lands ; 
it increases according to the extent in which such lands are 
brought into tillage, and diminishes according as their 
culture is relinquished. Such is the theory generally 
adopted by political economists. 

Rent, scientifically considered, is the sum paid for the 
inherent and natural properties of the soil, and is entirely 
distinct in its origin from the sums paid for all buildings, 
improvements, and local advantages produced by civilisa- 
tion, (such as the neighbourhood of towns and markets, 
roads, facilities of carriage, &c.) 

But as it is utterly impossible to distinguish in practice 
between this original rent paid solely for the soil, when 
first brought under the plough, and the sum added thereon 
for all subsequent improvements — so, in every instance, at 
present, the two are confounded under the general word 
rent. And the sum paid to that landlord, under that title, 
is assessed on all the profits of the farm, natural or acquired. 
Now let us see how, in practice, any surveyor or land agent 
apportions the rent, (using the word in the popular sense, 
as all practical men understand it.*) 

When a farm is to be let, and the rent to be assessed, 
the first calculation ie the gross profits, and the next 
the outgoings and the probable expenses of cultivation. 
There, then, remains the net produce, from which the 
farmer takes one share as the remuneration for his labour 
and capital ; the landlord another share, including or de- 
ducting the tithes. 

Formerly the gross produce used to be divided into three 
parts ; one-third allowed for the general expenses of farm- 
ing, one for the farmer's maintenance and profit on capital, 
and the third remaining was devoted to taxes, tithes, 
assessments, and — rent. It would appear by the evidence 
of Mr. Bradley, the eminent land-surveyor, before the Corn- 
profit is unexceptionable ; but practically it is of little or no value, and may 
lead, unless the sense in which he understood it be always kept in view, 
to the wost erroneous conclusions." — 3PCalloch on Rent, appended to his 
edition of Adam Smith. 

* See Donaldson's corrected edition of Bayldon's Art of Valuing Rents 
and Tillages, &c— (a deservedly popular and standard authority.) 



LETTERS TO J0HX BULL, ESQ. 149 

mittee of the House of Lords on the Burdens of Land, 
that this mode of apportionment still commonly exists in 
Yorkshire. But the difference of localities, the nature of 
soil, the proportions of grass-land, the distinction between 
light soils and clay (so considerable when the relative ex- 
penses of cultivation are estimated), all serve to render 
more complicated what was formerly this simple mode of 
computation ; and the improved cultivation of land, while 
increasing the gross produce, increases also the expenses 
of cultivating, As far as my own experience goes, I 
should say that the gross produce was generally now 
divided into five portions rather than three (unless where 
land is very fertile), that three-fifths went to the expenses, 
rates, and taxes ; one-fifth to the maintenance and remu- 
neration of the farmer, and the remaining fifth to the 
tithes and rent.* 

More or less competition among tenants, and peculiar 
circumstances independent of produce, may, in special 
cases, somewhat enhance or somewhat diminish the sum 
thus received for rent ; but, as a general rule, the relative 
proportion, whether under three, five, or more divisions of 
gross produce, will be found to prevail ; and there is not 

* In poor clay lands, the landlord has not so large a share, and the farmer 
somewhat a larger one ; for in these, the expenses being nearly as great as 
upon light soils yielding much more, a larger proportion must be set upon 
the cost of tillage ; a somewhat larger proportion to the return of the farmer, 
who requires little less capital to work the less productive than the more 
productive — and of course the landlord's proportion is smaller. In the 
county in which I reside, there are many farms in which the landlord's rent 
is not more than a seventh of the gross produce. 

Mr. De Quincy {Logic of Political Economy), who, to a mind habituated 
to metaphysical and abstract investigations, adds what is rare in political 
economists — a knowledge of the practical concerns and interests of husbandry 
■ — justly observes : " It has been accidentally Eicardo's ordinary oversight to 
talk of rent as if this were the one great burden on the farmer of land, whereas 
so much greater is the burden in this country from the capital required, that 
Mr. Jacob (well known in past times to the British Government as an excel- 
lent authority) reports the proportion of capital to rent needed in ordinary 
circumstances as very little less than four to one. From fifty-two reports 
made to a Committee of the Lords in the year before Waterloo, the result 
was, that upon one hundred acres, paying indent no more than £161 12s. 7d., 
the total of other expenses was £601 15*. Id. per annum. And in some 
other cases — as, for instance, in bringing into tillage the waste lands techni- 
cally known as poor clays — the proportion required for some years appeared 
to be much greater — on an average, three times greater — so that the capital 
would be ten or eleven times as much as the rent." This may explain to 
the Free -Trader why the farmer required such high remunerative prices in 
1815. 



150 LETTEES TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

an experienced valuer or land-surveyor who will not allow 
that in all cases it is from the net or the surplus profit 
that the farmer gets his maintenance and the landlord 
his rent. 

On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that any gain or 
any loss on the gross produce is the gain or loss of the 
tenant, whether he hold on a lease or from year to year : 
the landlord does not raise his rent when prices are high, 
and he does not, except in special cases, reduce it when 
prices are low. Prices, therefore, belong to the specula- 
tion of the farmer when he enters on the farm ; it is him 
that their fluctuations must immediately affect : and any 
general alteration of rent can only be made, not on the 
average of one or two years, but on the average of a certain 
series of years. Therefore, if there is a reduction on the 
gross profit, it must, at all events for a time, fall on the 
profits of the farmer ; though, doubtless, if long continued, 
the reduction will extend to the rent of the landlord.* To 
what extent that reduction of profits to the farmer has 
gone, since the free importation of foreign corn, I am con- 
vinced that our countrymen in towns cannot be aware, or 
they would be rather startled at the patience than callous 
to the complaints of those upon whom this vast experiment 
has been so ruthlessly tried. 

My table is covered with accounts of tenant-farmers; in 
many of them the whole amount of their share of profit on 
time and capital is absorbed — in some, considerably more 
— in few, less than half. But as I do not wish, my dear 
John, to fatigue your attention by minute arithmetical 
details — and as, to make such statements perfectly fair and 
clear, they ought to be numerous, selected from various 
districts under different modes and degrees of cultivation, 
and would thus swell these epistles beyond all readable 
length, I reluctantly postpone the enforcement of my posi- 

* " The occasional and temporary fluctuations in the market price of any 
• commodity Ml chiefly upon those parts of its price which resolve themselves 
into wages and profit. That part which resolves itself into rent is less 
affected by them. A rent certain in money is not in the least affected by 
them, either in its rate or its value. In settling the terms of the lease, the 
landlord and farmer endeavour, according to their best judgment, to adjust that 
rate, not to the temporary and occasional, but to the average and ordinary 
price of the produce." — Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book i M c. /— 
Frice of Commodities, 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 151 

tions by the vouchers before me. I will promise, however, 
that, if the question of relief may be allowed to rest on 
the proof of the generality and amount of the distress 
among farmers, I will produce evidence thereof in the 
minutest detail, with all balance of each possible saving 
effected by the recent tariffs and diminution of wages, that 
shall bear the severest test of the most lynx-eyed Free- 
Trad er. 

Meanwhile, one short appeal to common sense will suffice. 
Suppose that I have a farm on which not only rent has 
been computed, but my capital has been invested, on the 
calculation of the averages whereon the Tithe Commutation 
was based, those being what the statesmen who procured 
the Repeal of the Corn Law stated would be the averages 
on the continuance of which they reckoned.* According 
to averages, this farm, on the Four- Course System, pro- 
duces me — 

£ s. d. 

348 quarters, at 56s. per quarter . . . . 974 8 

And 435 quarters of barley, at £1 lis. 8d. per quarter. 683 15 



£1663 3 



See what the same produce me at the present prices — 

£ s. d. 

Wheat, 348 quarters, at the average of Christmas 1850, 

viz., 4:0s. "3d. per quarter 700 7 

Barley, 435 quarters, at £1 3s. 6d., ditto . . . 511 2 6 

£1211 9 6 

My gross loss on wheat and barley, by the fall in price, 
amounts to £451 13s. 6d. 

I am speaking here of a farm which I well know,f the 

* Sir Robert Peel said in 1842, " With reference to the probable re- 
munerating price, I should say, that for the protection of the agricultural 
interest, if the price of wheat, allowing for its natural oscillations, could be 
limited to some such amount as between 54s. and 58s., I do not believe that 
it is for the interest of the agriculturist that it should be higher. Take the 
average of the last ten years, excluding from some portion of the average the 
extreme prices of the last three years, and 56s. would be found to be the 
average. I cannot say, on the other hand, that I am able to see any great 
or permanent advantage to be derived from the diminution of the price of 
corn beyond the lowest amount I have named." 

f It is obviously unnecessary for the present purpose of illustration to 
enter into more detail. The quick Free-Trader will probably say, " But 
from how many acres do you get these quarters of grain ? Could you not 
produce a greater number of bushels per acre by higher cultivation ? " A 



152 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

rent of which is but £435, exclusive of tithes, and on which 
the farmer's net profit was calculated at the same sum, 
the remainder being sunk on the cost of cultivation. There- 
fore the gross loss exceeds the rent on the one hand, and 
the farmer's net profit on the other ? But there are savings 
in the reduced cost of seed, wages, &c. ? Certainly, to a 
considerable amount; but this farm (a turnip farm) was 
an excellent stock-farm. I have already shown how the re- 
duced price of meat affected those profits on which the 
farmer was to meet the loss upon corn ; and I do ask you, 
my dear John, (if you have not entirely forgotten all rural 
affairs,) to consider how it is possible that any economy and 
saving in seeds, and in wages, keep of horses, housekeeping 
of farmer, (computed to the uttermost farthing,) can render 
this gross loss on corn and on barley — added to all preced- 
ing and continued loss upon cattle — otherwise than appalling 
to the mind, and ruinous to the purse, of the farmer ? What 
can any probable or possible reduction of rent do here ? 
What would be 10 per cent, on the rental (viz., between 
<£40 and £50) in counterbalance to a deficit of hundreds ? 

In the first stage of the depression at which we are 
arrived, the loss, as I before stated, falls mainly upon the 
occupier. As yet the landowner has been enabled fairly to 
say — " I never called upon you in prosperous seasons for an 
increase of rent ; and one or two failing seasons you must 
bear as a just set-off to your advantage in the good. We 
are told by some that there are exceptional causes to the 
present prices ; we are not without hopes held forth by 
others that the Legislature will interpose on our behalf. 
We were assured that this repeal of the Corn Law was an 
experiment ; and certainly the consent of many was obtained 
to it by the calculations held out by the great authorities in 
favour of it — that we should still retain remunerating 
prices. We don't mean to say that there was an absolute 

very fair question, but not at present to the point. Either the land is already 
in the highest state of cultivation, or it is not. If it is, it can yield no more 
bushels without impoverishing the soil : if it is not, the farmer would reply 
frankly, " Sir, you are right : my land could produce a greater number of 
bushels by the help of a much greater cost in stock and artificial manures ; 
and under the stimulus of a fair competition I might so have risked my 
capital. But I dare not do so now, at these prices ; and indeed all my 
neighbours who have been thus applying to their land tbe utmost extent of 
their capital, in artificial manures or large purchases of stock, find that these 
prices don't pay the cost of increasing the produce." 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 153 

promise or contract on a subject on which there was no 
experience to base a guarantee ; but as these great authori- 
ties have been, as yet, egregiously mistaken in their calcu- 
lations, we have a fair hope that, in another Parliament, a 
great portion of such as those authorities influenced will do 
us the justice to reconsider the question. Such reduction 
of rent, meanwhile, as I could make, while in the aggregate 
most serious to me, would, subdivided amongst yourselves, 
scarcely be felt." — So think or say some. Others return 
the 10 per cent., and scarcely felt it is by the occupier — 
severely, often, no doubt by the owner. 

Well, grant that this depreciation continues — that land- 
lords' rent and farmers' profit are to be re-assessed on an 
average of years, (according to such prices) — grant that, 
in consequence of the savings from cost effected by the 
tariff and in wages, the farm upon which £451 were lost in 
barley and wheat is only lowered in annual value £200 
a-year of net profit, and that landlord and farmer divide 
that loss between them — still it is not only a question of 
rent ; the landlord will lose about a fourth of his gross 
farm-revenue therefrom, or at least 35 per cent, of his net 
income ; but the farmer must also lose a fourth of his 
profits in return to his capital. And the error into w T hich 
uninformed theorists have fallen on this point will be found, 
I think, clearly explained in the note I append.* 

* Political economists are quite right in practice, as well as theory, in 
supposing that rent comes from the surplus profit ; but those of Mr. Ricardo's 
school err in treating the farmer's share as if that did not, also, by uniform 
practice, come from the surplus profit also. They hare argued, for instance, 
as if on a farm paying £435 a-year rent, and returning for the tenant's profit, 
say £435 a-year also — there was. in consequence of low prices, a loss in gross 
profit of £200 — the landlord would take that loss all on himself by lowering 
the rent to that amount — whereas by the invariable practice of surveyors and 
land agents, and by the usages of custom, a re-assessment would divide that 
loss between the farmer's profit and the landlord's rent. W r e shall see in the 
next page that there are many disturbing circumstances which would long 
prevent the landlord's share of loss being so large as the farmer's; but in 
no case of re-assessment, as a general principle, would his rent fall, but what 
the farmer's profit on the capital he has expended must fall also. The work- 
ing out of this principle becomes yet more clear, if Ave look to the practice in 
other countries, where the landlord's share is not positively based upon what 
Ave call rent. Thus, for instance, it is very common abroad, in France and 
in Itaiv, for the landlord and farmer to share the net annual profits between 
them, the farmer finding the requisite capital and paying all the expenses. 
These shares are sometimes in equal moieties ; sometimes where the ground 
is fertile and the expense light, the landlord's share of profit is much more 
than the moiety. Generally (in spite of what is said to the contrary) it is 



154 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ, 

Grant that you mulct the landlord and the tenant 
equally to a fourth of their income — the fourth of the 
yearly proceeds from the principal part of the real property 
of the nation is gone from those not only who spend it, but 
those upon whom it was spent. 

Whichever way we look to the question, £200 loss upon 
a farm that yielded £435 rent is lost to the community — 
whether subtracted for the most part from the profits of 
the farmer, or equably divided between him and the land- 
lord — all those upon whom that sum were expended, must 
to that amount feel the loss. Extend that loss throughout 
the country, and say if it is to be despised — or if it be only 
a question of rent. 

Meanwhile many circumstances concur to delay for a 
considerable period any fall of rents proportionate to the 
loss of the occupier. The landlord, be he ever so benevo- 
lent and desirous to meet the times, has against his con- 
cessions the check of his absolute ruin ; to the majority of 
the larger landed proprietors, with hereditary burdens, a 
reduction of 20 per cent, on the gross rental would wholly 
absorb the net income. A large proportion of proprietors 
on a smaller scale, habitually resident in the country, and 
acquainted with rural management, would prefer cultivating 
a considerable portion of their land themselves to reduc- 
tions which they could not bear without resigning, not 
luxuries, but comforts, and crippling the means of educa- 
tion to their children. For though the land, if let, might 
not yield enough for adequate rent to the landlord, and 
adequate return to the tenant, yet, taken in hand by the 
owner, it might well yield enough when there was only one 
share, instead of two, to be taken from the produce. On 
the other hand, while the landlord has the check of his 
ruin against material reduction, the farmer is urged by the 

larger tlian in England, inasmuch, as there are not the same exclusive deduc- 
tions from the landlord's profit. Now here it is at once obvious, that all loss 
of net profit falls on the tenant as well as the landlord ; and so it does in 
England, because, though here the rent simplifies the contract, the same 
common-sense principle prevails in practice — viz., that both landlord and 
tenant are paid out of net profit. And the reason why, in England, the first 
loss falls exclusively on the farmer is also obvious. He, by the payment of 
a fixed rent, becomes not only the sharer of profit, but the speculator in its 
variations. He has all the extra gain in the good year, and therefore sus- 
tains all the loss on the bad, until, as I before said, by a long continuation 
of the bad years, a re-assessment is made to the joint loss of both parties. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 155 

fear of bis ruin into struggling on to the last, rather than 
throw up the farm on which he has sunk all his capital. 
The existing race of farmers cannot, as a class, have the 
resource of other occupation ; and there will be always 
found competitors for a vacant farm as there are for a 
theatre, though both {arm and theatre may be a losing 
concern. 

"'Tis credulous hope that nurtures life, and whispers 
Some kiud ' to-morrow ' — if we droop to-day. 
'Tis hope that nerves the tiller of the soil, 
And bids him trust the corn-seed to the furrow, 
Sure of a usurer's wealth from niggard fields." 

A new race, too, continually springs up — the children, 
perhaps, of traders — liking the hardy life and healthful 
pursuits of the farmer, willing to trust to the future; 
having some little extra means, beyond the capital invested 
on the land ; disposed to risk, and for the present resign, 
their fair share of pecuniary return from the land. They 
may serve to keep up the rents of the landlord ; but do 
they keep up the present generation of farmers ? Nay, do 
we not hear it constantly said, with all the complacent 
sangfroid of pseudo-political economists, "No doubt the 
present race of farmers must be swept away, and a new 
race of more energy and capital must succeed." How then 
can it be said that this is not a vital question for the 
existing generation of farmers ? how can you be astonished 
that they object to being swept away ? Great changes in 
a commercial system must necessarily occasion great dis- 
tress and hardship to those the changes affect ; but when 
your changes affect a class so numerous as the living men 
engaged in agriculture, at least make your changes as mild 
and as gradual as you can. 

But what effect is this loss to both classes of employer, 
landlord or tenant, to have on the wages of the labourer ; 
or his social condition ? I grant to you frankly that, as 
yet, the distress is but gradually passing from the first 
phase in the cycle — viz., the class of the occupier; but 
must it not soon operate on the labourer to a degree far 
beyond what it has yet reached in those partial districts, 
where wages already have been brought below the level of 
the cheaper prices of food ? 

You say wages do not depend on the price of bread, and 



156 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

you point to instances in manufacturing towns, in which, 
while the price of bread has fallen, the money rate of 
wages has not decreased. 

It is this very fact that ought to make us beware how 
we adopt the error into which a cursory reading of the 
political economists is apt to betray us. They are generally 
inclined, in the course of argument, to personify the country 
or community as if it were an individual, and to say such 
and such things affect the country or interest the com- 
munity. But this country or community is parcelled out 
in different classes and interests, and what may affect the 
one is often very slow in reaching the other. 

"The cost of food is," no doubt, (as Mr. M'Culloch 
observes,) "the main regulator of wages " in the long run. 
But for a considerable time it may regulate wages in the 
agricultural districts, and not affect them in the manufac- 
turing, and vice versa. And for this very obvious reason, 
which comprises one of the fundamental doctrines of poli- 
tical economy — Wages vise and fall not only in money value, 
but in actual value, in proportion to the ratio between the 
population and the Capital which employs it.* Wages will 
rise not only in countries, but in particular districts, 
according as the capital in those districts increases faster 
than the population ; and fall in proportion as the capital is 
decreased in ratio to the population. 

Whenever therefore capital, which, as Mr. Mill truly 
says, is nothing more than " the result of savings," is dimin- 
ished in the agricultural districts, wages must fall. But 
certainly you have left the farmer no savings ! His capital 
is diminished, and diminishing ; and, by the inevitable law 
of political economy, the wages given to the population he 
employs must proportionally decrease, so long as that 
population increases or remains stationary. Now, as Mr. 
M'Culloch has shown, (Pol. Uco?i., p. 413,) when wages 
decline in consequence of a diminution of the capital ap- 
portioned to their payment, the supply of labourers does 
not immediately decline ; and therefore, for a certain time, 
wages may fall in the agricultural districts, and not in the 
manufacturing, if the capital in the one, as proportioned to 
the population is diminished, and is not diminished in the 

* Mill, Political Economy, Sect, ii., chap. 2, on wages. M'Culloch, 
ibid., Part III. — On the Distribution of Wealth. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 157 

other. By degrees that portion of the surplus agricultural 
population which is not removed by mortality or emigration 
is draughted off to the manufacturing towns, and dimin- 
ishes wages there by increasing the supply of labour. The 
comparatively better wages in the manufacturing towns 
could not be permanent, because it is an axiom in Political 
Economy that ultimately both " profits and wages on land 
regulate those in manufacturing communities.' ' Mean- 
while, if the capital devoted to the land be not repaired, 
the consequences upon wages become more and more 
serious and threatening. For, again, Political Economy 
tells us that agricultural wages rise in proportion as capital 
is employed in bringing inferior soils into cultivation, and 
the concomitant necessity of additional cost on the good. 
And therefore, as either inferior soils are abandoned, or less . 
cost devoted to the good, wages continue to fall; and 
hence it is that " the cost of food is the main regulator of 
wages." 

Now, to what depth a fall of wages, caused by permanent 
diminution of capital, in ratio to the population, may de- 
scend, Mr. Mill shall inform us : — "How slow soever the 
increase of population, provided that of capital is still 
slower, wages will be reduced so low that a portion of 
the population will regularly die from the consequences of 
want." * 

Certainly the farmer does not trouble his head about 
these theories. The distress falls first upon him ; he looks 
round to see what he can save : he comes slowly and 
reluctantly (for he is a warm-hearted fellow, the British 
farmer) to a reduction in wages equivalent to the price at 
which he must sell the main article of food ; but come to it 
he must at last. And it is only the fortunate check of the 
farmer's own burden, the poor-rate, that interposes between 
the labourer and that absolute want which Mr. Mill predicts 
to him under the operations of a capital that decreases in 
ratio to the population. 

The distress extends necessarily from occupier and 
labourer to proprietor, and soon spreads to all the trades 
with which they have dealt ; and if the foreigner preserve 
awhile the cotton manufacturer, I know not if that be an 
adequate counter-balancing advantage, and am tempted to 
* Mill, Polit. Econ., p. 58. 



158 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

exclaim with Lord Chatham, " That state alone is sovereign 
which stands on its own strength, and hangs not on the 
will of the foreigner." 

But, meanwhile, there is another class most materially 
affected by the change — a class most essential to the civili- 
sation of the country — I mean the Parochial Clergy. When 
they were induced, for the benefit of the community, to 
commute their tithes into a corn rent- charge upon the 
average of seven years, they were not led to anticipate the 
time when your law was to deprive them of from twenty to 
twenty-five per cent, of their income. To that reduction, 
if free importation continues, and, with it, the present 
prices, that class of our clergy most worked, and which few 
will consider as over-paid, must soon submit. And when 
we remember how the income of these men is, for the most 
part, devoted — the unostentatious charity they practise, the 
popular education they so liberally help to elevate and 
diffuse (compelled, by their residence in the country, to 
spend what they require for their wants chiefly among the 
neighbouring traders) — I can conceive nothing more calcu- 
lated to retard the prosperity and well-being of the rural 
districts than the impoverishment of that class of gentle- 
men which applies means the most moderate to services the 
most useful. 

It is true that the clergy profit by the cheaper price in 
the necessaries of life. But that does not meet the ques- 
tion of justice. For you do not say to the other classes of 
the community, "In return for such cheapness, we will 
take away a fourth of your income." The clergyman only 
profits by that cheapness because you cannot exclude him 
from the general effects of legislation. But if it be true 
that he could profit to the amount of from 20 to 25 per 
cent, by your changes, then the other members of society 
whom you have not mulcted to that amount profit to the 
same degree, and relatively to them he is therefore still 
from 20 to 25 per cent, the poorer. 

But it is a very small proportion of the clergy, and 
indeed of all the middle class, whom a cheaper rate of 
housekeeping profits to between a third and a fourth of 
their income. 

It profits those whose income is at the lowest, whose 
families are unusually large, and whoso whole income, or 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 159 

\ nearly so, is spent upon the absolute bread and meat of the 
! household : but this applies less to the clergy and the 
middle class of gentry than to most men : their chief 
yearly expenses are not in housekeeping, but in various 
wants and duties, which your tariffs as yet little reach. 
There is an insurance on life, or a saving for wife and 
kindred ; charities ; doctors ; the various accidents which 
are never anticipated ; and, above all, the school bills for 
children. And if, on the average, you say that the paro- 
chial clergyman gains 10 per cent, on his house bills, and 
will lose 25 per cent in hard money, he has still to thank 
you for a loss, on a modest income, of 15 per cent., which 
may materially interfere with the usefulness of his life as 
well as its comforts. 

R~or do I think it a matter of subordinate importance, 
though it lies latent, acts indirectly, and has been wholly 
unnoticed, to consider what effect the impoverishment of 
squire, clergyman, and farmer, will practically have on the 
quality of instruction to be received by the rising genera- 
tion ; — how far the stinted income of the parents may stint 
also the education of the sons. At the very time that you 
say that farmers most need intellectual culture, and call 
upon them to grapple with new theories and rely upon dis- 
coveries in science, you will take away the very power to 
bestow on their children the culture you enforce. The 
clergyman will be compelled to lower the standard of edu- 
cation for his sons, the squire that for his ; for the first 
item on which men, pushed hard to make both ends meet, 
retrench, is the school bills of their children. The im- 
poverishment of these classes diminishes the source of 
intelligence which has been hitherto the richest in its sup- 
plies to the nation. For if we look through biography, we 
shall find that by far the largest proportion of the most 
eminent men of whom we boast in literature, in science, in 
the elevated and intellectual departments of action, in all 
that has enriched our nation with the ideas that constitute 
its most imperishable wealth, have sprung, not from manu- 
facturing towns, but from rural districts, and claim descent 
from farmers and yeomen, country squires, and clergymen. 
I say this in no disrespect to manufacturing communities, 
certainly in no disparagement of the keen and lively intelli- 
gence which such communities arouse and foster, but which 



160 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

it is in the nature of things that such communities should 
divert either to the pursuit of gain or the contests of 
politics. The trading and manufacturing Cathaginians 
were quite as clever as the agricultural Romans, but the 
Carthaginians were the first nation that had for its prover- 
bial maxim — "Bay at the dearest and sell at the cheapest 
market ; " * and the Romans have left to all time grand 
thoughts, the memory of great deeds, and the heirlooms of 
imperishable books ; while the Carthaginians, wholly occu- 
pied in commerce, and presenting to us an aspect so superb 
in the sole relation with which political economy professes 
to deal — viz., the economy of material wealth — the nego- 
tiators and factors of the world — contributed as little as 
might be to the wealth of the mind — to science and art ; 
and a Voyage round Africa, by one of their generals, is the 
sole contribution still extant of the rivals to Roman power 
during a dominion that exceeded seven centuries. t 

* The following anecdote, recorded by one of the fathers of the Christian 
Church, (St. Aug. lib. xiii. de Trin., c. 3,) in reference to the maxim we are 
told to receive as a virtual precept of Christianity, is rather amusing : — "A 
mountebank promised to the Carthaginians to discover to them their most 
secret thoughts, if they came on a certain day to hear him. When they had 
assembled, 'The secret thought of all of you,' said this shrewd fellow, 'is, 
when you buy, to buy cheap ; when you sell, to sell dear.' They all con- 
fessed laughing, and with great applause, that he had denned aright — and 
thus," adds St. Augustine, "confessed themselves — rogues!" The saint 
there would seem a little too severe if his meaning be not carefully denned. 
It is a very honest wish to buy cheap and sell dear, provided it is one of the 
thoughts of men ; but if it is the paramount engrossing thought, then I am 
afraid that Augustine spoke very much— as a saint would do. 

f Intellectual education was much restricted in Carthage — Greek, at one 
time, interdicted. Terence was an African, though it is not clear if he 
was, properly speaking, a Carthaginian by birth ; but he left his country at 
the age of thirteen, received his education at Home, and cannot be judged as 
a Carthaginian writer, though he may, perhaps, be fairly regarded as an 
example of what Carthaginians might have produced, had their extraordinary 
intelligence been less confined to buying cheap and selling dear. If Terence be 
excepted, I am not aware that they are recorded to have produced any other 
literary works than Han no's Voyage, cited in the text (which is the sole 
one extant, through the medium of a Greek translation),* except a long trea- 

* [This remarkable fragment barely extends to the length of half a dozen 
pages octavo. Slight though the sketch is, it is pronounced by Montesquieu 
one of the most valuable remains of antiquity. Its title, kvvoovos Kapxydovicov 
fSuai\evs, k.t.A., maybe rendered thus : The Account of the Voyage of Hanno, 
Commander of the Carthaginians round the parts of Libya beyond the Pillars 
of Hercules, which he deposited in the Temple of Saturn. It has been 
translated into Italian by Ramusio, into Spanish by Campomanes, into 
French by Bougainville, and into English by Thomas Falconer.] 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 161 

It has been so haughtily asked by Mr. Cobden, what the 
"landed aristocracy" has contributed to the mental wealth 
of this country, that we may be forgiven the answer — 
"More than two-thirds of the greatest men whom your 
history can boast of ! " 

But, as here I am contending for the value of sustained 
education, alike to the proprietor, the farmer, and clergy- 
man of the parish — and as all three, in fact, appertain to 
the " Agricultural Mind " — may I respectfully ask, whether, 
from the first date of manufacturers amongst us, with all 
the wealth they have amassed, with all the laws that have 
favoured them, their several communities leagued together 
— and added, if you will, to all the manufacturing popula- 
tions of Europe — have produced either writers or thinkers, 
authorities in the law and the state, patriots or heroes, to 
compare for an instant to those whose fathers were 
dwellers on our soil, or pastors in our Church ? 

What writers to compare to Newton, to Bacon, to Boyle ; 
to Addison, to Dryden, to Byron ; to Burns ; to Gibbon ; 
to Robertson ; to Fielding, and to Swift ? 

What statesmen who will throw into shade, Burleigh, 
and Cecil ; Cromwell, and Clarendon ; Walpole, and Chat- 
ham ; Fox, Wyndham, and Grey ? 

Where are the patriots or heroes — the doers of deeds — 
who are to obscure the great images of Hampden and 
Sidney — of Eliot, of Yane, of Falkland and Derby, of Wel- 
lesley and Nelson ? Where the Luminaries of Law, that 

tise on Agriculture hj one of their generals ; and after their f&li they got up 
one philosopher, Clitoniachus, who attempted to comfort them by essays — a 
diligent and learned person, whom Cicero says was acute enough for a 
Carthaginian — (acutus, ut Teen us), We have a fine picture left to us of the 
great Hannibal, in contrast to his countrymen. "When, after the severe con- 
ditions imposed by Eome, which ruined their freedom and grandeur, they 
were lamenting over the necessity of paying the fine from their private for- 
tunes, Hannibal burst out laughing. Chid for his indecorum, he answered, 
" My laughter is near upon tears. You are lamenting your money, and I 
thought of the ruin of Carthage." 

I must be pardoned this long reference to the great Commercial State of 
the ancient world, because it stands in contrast to the Greek republics, 
where, and in Athens especially, though all encouragement was given to 
foreign commerce, it was carried on by settlers — not the citizens. The 
Greek republicans were so jealous of political freedom that they did not like 
to extend the franchise to men who, as dependent on the foreigner, were 
deemed, right or wrong, by all the Greek sages and legislators, to have an 
interest apart from, and sometimes paramount to, the domestic and internal 
welfare of the State. 



162 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

are to outshine Coke, "the great oracle of our municipal 
jurisprudence " — Somers, " the chief founder of our con- 
stitutional monarchy " — Mansfield, Nottingham, and Ers- 
kine ; — Cowper, equally famous as lawyer and statesman ; 
or the stainless Camden, " whose name Englismen will 
honour to the latest generations, for having secured per- 
sonal freedom, by putting an end to arbitrary arrests under 
general warrants : for having established the constitutional 
rights of juries ; and for having placed on an imperishable 
basis the liberty of the press ? " * 

All these — sons of the soil or the Church ! t We may 
be proud of such claims on the respect that is due to one 
use of our orders (and that use offthe loftiest), and we may 
justly desire that there should be no diminution in that 
degree of instruction which the children of those orders 
may receive for the ornament or strength of generations to 
come. Nor for them only, but for the whole population, I 
say, that to lower the standard of education among the 
classes set apart for that portion of the intelligence of the 
country not devoted to buying in the cheapest market to 
sell in the dearest, is to lower the standard of idea, and 
to debase the quality, while it diminishes the degree, of 
intelligence throughout the whole community ; — and that 
in this question of prices which you would reduce to one 
of rent — this question affecting so fearfully the means of 
squire and clergyman — yeoman and farmer — is inevitably 
involved a fall in the standard of education for the rising 
generation — since the impoverishment of the parent must 
affect the resources on which the education of the sons will 
depend. 

You may tell us that Adam Smith, however, asserts that 
merchants and master manufacturers are more intelligent 
as a body than we plain country squires. — (And their in- 
telligence, indeed, I never dispute ; it is only the applica- 
tion of it which can give us, through biography, any claim 
to superiority.) But while Adam Smith praises their 
a,cuteness, observe, my dear John, how he cautions society 

* Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors. 

t Even Mr. Cartwright, to whose mechanical ingenuity manufacturers 
owe so much, was the son of a country gentleman ; and Mr. Cobden himself, 
of whose talents no man can doubt, is fond of stating, with some semblance 
of pride, that he, too, is a child of the land. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 163 

against their judgment. And in citing the words of the 
great writer upon whom that class which is supposed to 
have an interest more peculiarly counter to the agricultural 
iu the question before us, chiefly relies, I say with sincerity, 
that the language of caution employed by Adam Smith is 
far stronger than I would have presumed to use : — 

" Merchants and master manufacturers, ... as during 
their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, 
they have frequently more acuteness of understanding 
than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their 
thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the 
interest of their own particular branch of business that that 
of the society, their judgment, even when given with the 
greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occa- 
sion), is much more to be depended upon with regard to the 
former of those two objects than the latter. . . . The 
interest of the dealers in any particular branch of trade and 
manufactures is always in some degree different from, and 
even opposite to, that of the public. The proposal of any 
new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this 
order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, 
and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and 
carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but 
with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order 
of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of 
the public ; who have generally an interest to deceive, and 
even to oppress the public ; and who, accordingly, have 
upon many occasions both oppressed and deceived it."— 
(Adam Smith, Book I., c. xi., Wealth of Nations.) 

To sum up the authorities from Free-trading political 
economists that I have arrayed on the side of justice to 
the land, I must here bid you observe, my dear John, how 
wholly it has been overlooked, that when Adam Smith 
expresses himself in favour of the free importation of cattle 
and corn, he does so expressly upon the assumption that that 
importation will be so slight as not to inj ure the farmer. This 
is his main and almost sole argument for advising such im- 
portation. "If," he says, "importation of foreign cattle 
were made ever so free, so few could be imported that the 
grazing trade of Great Britain could be little affected by 
it." — (Book IV., c. xi.) And he supposes that the importa- 
tion of lean cattle — which, he says, only could be imported, 

m 2 



164 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

would not interfere with the interest of feeding or fattening 
countries, only with the breeding. Experience having proved 
that these assumptions are wholly contradicted by the facts 
— 1st, That the importations of foreign cattle have been 
very large ; 2nd, That not only lean cattle, bnt meat for mar- 
ket (cured meat alone to at least four times the weight of 
the lean cattle), has been imported ; 3rd, That the reduced 
price in meat effected by these importations does interfere 
with the interest of the feeding and fattening countries, 
since the price at which cattle are again sold by the farmer 
does not pay the cost of feeding and fattening ; — the whole 
of Adam Smith's argument falls to the ground, and he 
himself, in consistency, would have been compelled to re- 
linquish it, since (in Book I., c. xi.) he had shown it to be 
absolutely necessary for the improvement of tillage that the 
" price of butcher's meat, and consequently of cattle, must 
rise till it gets so high as to become as profitable to employ 
the most fertile and best cultivated lands in raising food 
for them, as in raising corn." 

In the same chapter (Book IV., c, xi.) he argues for the 
importation of free corn expressly on the same ground — 
viz., that " it would very little affect the interest of the 
farmer in England, since corn is a much more bulky com- 
modity than butcher's meat ; since the small quantity of 
corn imported in times of scarcity ought to satisfy the 
farmers they had nothing to fear from the freest importa- 
tion : and since (according to his calculation) the average 
importation one year with another does not exceed the five 
hundredth and seventy- one part of the annual consumption." 
Here again, too, the recent facts being diametrically op- 
posed by experience to the assertion in theory, Adam 
Smith's argument is lost; and here again he would be 
compelled in consistency to withdraw it, since, if the free 
importation does largely affect the capital of the farmer, 
Adam Smith has expressly stated his opinion, " that the 
capital employed in Agriculture, not only puts into motion 
a greater quantity of productive labour than any equal 
capital employed in manufactures, but in proportion, too, 
to the quantity of productive labour which it employs, it 
adds a much greater value to the annual produce of the 
land and labour of the country, to the real wealth and 
revenue of its inhabitants. Of all the ways in which a 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 165 

capital can be employed, it is by far the most advantageous 
to the community." # 

This early father of the doctrine of free competition 
proceeds to admit and to state that " there are two cases 
in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some 
burden ujDon foreign, for the encouragement of domestic, 
industry. 

" The first is when some particular sort of industry is 
necessary for the defence of the country." He alludes here 
to the Shipping Interest under the Navigation Act; but it 
matters not whether the defence be from without or within. 
A country may be in as much danger from internal disaffec- 
tion as from a foreign enemy ; and there are few, perhaps, 
who would not think it a less danger for Britain to face a 
fleet from Russia, than to contend with deep and rankling 
discontent amongst the owners and occupiers of the British 
soil. 

' ; The second case" (says Adam Smith) "in which it 
will be generally advantageous to lay some burden upon 
foreign, for the encouragement of domestic, industry, is 
where some tax is imposed at home upon the produce of 
the latter. In this case it seems reasonable that an equal 
tax should be imposed -upon the produce of the former. 
This would not give the monopoly of the home market to 
domestic industry, nor turn towards a particular employ- 
ment a greater share of the stock and labour of the country 
than what would naturally go to it. It would only hinder any 
part of what would naturally go to it from being turned away 
by the tax into a less natural direction, and would leave the 
competition between foreign and domestic industry after the 
tax, as nearly as possible upon the same footing as before 
it." Therefore, in just equivalent to the taxes on the land 
(for every tax on the producer, by diminishing his capital, 
is effectively a tax on the produce), a correspondent tax on 
the foreign-corn competitor is required. 

Thirdly. — Mark this ! Even where neither of these cases 

* Certain modem political economists contend that this is a very exagge- 
rated estimate of the national value of agricultural capital ; but they will 
observe that that is not here the point in question : the more important 
Adam Smith considered that capital, the more he would have shrunk from 
invading it by any of his own theories as to the safety of free importation of 
agricultural produce, if experience showed that the 'facts contradicted those 
theories to the injury of the capital. 



166 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

may apply, Adam Smith states, " that where, by previous 
high duties or prohibitions, employment has been extended 
to a great multitnde of hands, humanity may in this case 
require that the freedom of trade should be restored only 
by slow gradations, and with a good deal of reserve and 
circumspection." — (Book IV., c. xi.) 

I now hasten to the close. Without entering into mere 
party and personal questions involving the rise or the fall 
of Governments ; without impugning the motives of the 
dead, or violating the respect due to the living ; with as 
little of acrimony, I trust, as may be compatible with 
manly and earnest contest against powerful opponents — I 
have stated the case of my Clients— I have summoned as 
my witnesses on their behalf (for a fixed duty at least) the 
great masters of economical science. The distress they 
allege is acknowledged from the throne ; it is allowed by 
the Minister. At present, as I have stated, the full weight 
of distress rests on the occupier. Soon it must extend, not 
only to clergman and landowner — but to labourer and 
tradesman. Already in many districts the labourer begins 
to feel that the cheap loaf entails low wages, and brings 
him nearer and nearer to the workhouse. In other dis- 
tricts, where wages are not yet lowered to the ratio of 
prices, the farmer feels the humanity that is akin to his 
genial nature oozing away, as the wellbeing of the men he 
employs is adduced as an argument for beggaring the em- 
ployer. Grand social evil! Hostile interest between 
masters and men — beware how it spreads too far. Already 
in rural towns tradesmen begin to feel the change — already 
say, " Trade is bad ; something must be done for the 
farmer." Ay, that " something." Yfhat but the miti- 
gation of your policy can do it ? Already the tradesmen 
in the metropolis, spite of the temporary aid the Grand 
Exhibition may afford them, begin to complain that gentle- 
men don't lay out what they did; and many a sturdy 
Free- Trader behind the counter is already converted by 
the inspection of his ledger. Common sense is at work 
amongst all who sell, and is putting this question, which 
admits but one answer — " Do I save , by the baker what I 
lose by abridging the means of my customers ? " And so 
gradually will that same common sense work, till it reach 
the manufacturer himself through all its indirect channels, 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 167 

and prove to him the true value of the Home market, that 
he at pre scut despises. 

Sooner or later, the movement of distress must pass 
through all these phases, if there be a single shred of truth 
in the fundamental laws that govern the relations of seller 
and buyer, of capital and wages. And if the question of 
some relief to the agricultural interest could be delayed till 
then, there would be no doubt as to how the constituencies 
of the countiy would decide it. But then, alas ! much 
greater the difficulty to repair the evil — a vast portion of 
the agricultural capital would be irretrievably sunk and 
destroyed — the process of restoration would be far more 
arduous and prolonged. Feelings of bitterness and desire 
of retaliation would have been engendered by distress and 
rooted by despair ; and I fear that you would have con- 
verted the very class most naturally inclined to peace and 
order, into the very one most dangerous and disaffected. 

Pause, then, before you so resolutely say that you will 
not retrace a step of your path — before you close the door 
to all conciliation, on so many millious of your suffering 
countrymen. I own myself that it is the social considera- 
tions inseparably mixed up with this question that weigh 
upon me far more than any that can be suggested by the 
principles to which mere political economy confines its 
survey. And I will own further, that, while pleading for 
the cultivator of the land, I carry my sight far beyond his 
immediate interest ; and I feel, as an Englishman, grave 
apprehensions for all the other sections into which the 
community is divided. 

Grant that you are correct in your general principle, as 
political economists ; pause as statesmen, pause as patriots, 
before you so rigidly apply it. 

"All that in the end become evil in example, spring from principles that 
were good in the commencement." 

Such are the words assigned to Cassar by an historian, 
reared amid those feuds of party and of class which closed 
in the corruption of the noblest people and the downfall of 
the grandest commonwealth that illustrate the mournful 
record of departed nations. 

Our foreign trade, the exports of our cotton manufac- 
ture, are worthy objects of attention ; but they are not the 



i6S LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

sole ones. The wealth, of a State itself cannot so absorb 
the attention of a thoughtful Legislator, but what he will 
also regard the moral and social circumstances by which 
alone that wealth can be permanently secured. Let me 
care ever so much for money, it is not only to make money 
that I must care ; I must also look to the safeguards that 
are to prevent me from losing it. 

" Defence," says Adam Smith, " is of much more im- 
portance than opulence." 

Our debt — the fundholder — the safety of the empire in 
its actual and necessary defences — all these I must look to 
as a citizen, as well as to the quantity of cotton I can sell 
to the foreigner. 

The debt — the fundholder ! Are any of us so blind to 
the fact that, ever since Peel's Currency Bill, there has 
rankled deep in the minds of the agricultural class, which 
that Bill so gravely affected, a sentiment of injury which 
it were wise not to irritate too sorely ? And though I, 
myself, reprove that sentiment, and would resist any re- 
taliation which it might engender, there is a man of far 
more authority than I, who, not very long since, has openly 
maintained that sentiment to be just ; a man at the time 
clothed with the dignity of a Minister of the Cabinet, and 
who is now the momentary idol of the party that arrogates 
the title of " Liberal" — I mean, of course, Sir James 
Graham.* This powerful orator and distinguished legis- 
lator has lately invited us to frankness ; pardon me, then, 
John, if I am frank ; for I speak of an evil which, to my 
mind, is as great as (perhaps it is greater than) all that 
could fall on the land. Frankly I say, then, this : — 

Plunge the whole agricultural class into permanent diffi- 
culty and distress, and depend upon it the fundholder will 

* " Subsequent events had confirmed the wisdom of the predictions of the 
Hon. Member for Essex (Mr. Earing). The landlords were obliged to re- 
duce their rents equivalant to the altered value of money ; they were obliged 
to reduce their means of meeting their engagements, while the weight of 
their fixed engagements, instead of being diminished, was actually increased 
by the alteration effected in the standard of value. He concurred in what 
was stated on that point in the Eeport of the Agricultural Commission of 
last session. In fact he drew up the report that was agreed to by that com- 
mittee ; he had stated in that report that a matter which, according to the 
time prescribed for its consideration, might be but a trifling injustice in 1826 
and 1827, would be an overwhelming and most indefensible injustice in 
1833.' ' — Speech of Sir JoAr.es Graham on the Com Laws, March 6, 1834. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL; ESQ. 169 

have cause to tremble — either by loud demands for paper 
currency, or by a determined resolution to resist the taxes 
which defray the debt. 

First, indeed, under the cry of economy will go those 
expenses which maintain our navy and protect our shores. 
And, however welcome to the followers of Mr. Cobden may 
be the recruits to his financial standard amongst the agri- 
cultural members to whom he has before appealed, I do 
not think that prudent men — nor men who have not lost 
the love and pride of country, without which no com- 
munity can endure long — can contemplate without alarm 
the probability of such a combination of votes in the House 
of Commons as may reduce the empire of Great Britain 
to a fourth- rate state, leaving none of the defences which 
other fourth-rate states concur in maintaining. It was 
the boast of Themistocles that he knew how to render a 
small state great. From a modern school politicians have 
arisen, who seem to make it their boast that they know 
how to make great states small.* 

Look where we will at the consequence of leaving a deep 
and lasting remembrance of wrong and of insult upon the 
minds and hearts of a vast number of men — whom no re- 
distribution of the franchise, however artfully arranged, 
can deprive of numerous representatives connected by the 
union of a common suffering — and there is cause for the 
most anxious alarm in all who do not confine their 
thoughts to the Carthaginian's maxim of " Buy cheap, and 
sell dear." 

You dilate on the blessings of Peace — you cannot prize 
those blessings too highly ; but is there no danger in im- 
pressing upon the most high-spirited and martial part of 
your population the conviction that in war lies their sole 
chance of return from property and remuneration for 
labour? You must be conscious that the evil which 

^ * Themistocles fulfilled his boast by a policy which appears to have con- 
sisted in creating and maintaining a shipping interest and a maritime power 
—obtaining the sovereignty of the sea ; founding and securing an empire of 
dependent confederacies ; introducing into his own country the manufactures 
and arts of the foreigner ; securing to them the markets of Home : protect- 
ing their industry where such protection seemed needed ; but not giving to 
the counsels of those who, by foreign trade, could make themselves inde- 
pendent of the native interests, the preponderant influence in the state. 
Such, too, was the policy by which England rose ; and such is the policy the 
new school would reverse from its base to its capital. 



170 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

modern civilisation has most to apprehend lies, not as of 
old, in the incursions of the barbarians, but in the struggle 
and ferment of civilisation itself ; that in the heart of your 
great manufacturing towns works alike all that expedite 
progress, and all that can threaten dissolution ; that thence 
emerge the dread " coJiors febrium ; " the heated desires for 
a change never circumscribed in the mild limits of reform; 
the tendencies to whatever can revolutionise institutions, 
and substitute for the fair false dreams of Atlantis and 
Utopia those conditions of labour on which practical society 
is based. Checked by the inert resistance of the classes 
that live on the land, this, which, is the immemorial and 
universal spirit of manufacturing communities under all 
forms of government, is but conducive to improvement. 
The collision of opinion, when the innovating spirit is op- 
posed and tempered by that which adheres to the ancient 
forms of constitutional freedom, strikes out those compro- 
mises which admit of change, but temper change into 
harmony with order. It is good for democracy itself that 
the state should contain a fair proportion of the elements 
of conservatism. Political liberty could not last a year, if 
there were not in the community some retentive and tena- 
cious principle which preserves liberty itself from the 
eternal experiments of fanatics ; who, finding no movement 
of the machine can convey them beyond the reach of toil 
and of hunger, vent their disappointment at last on the 
mainspring of the mechanism itself. It is the recognition 
and establishment of this principle which has rendered 
hitherto so stable the mighty Republic of America ; and 
has balanced the impatience of men " in crowded cities 
pent," with the counterpoise of that prudence which is 
inseparably connected with property in land — that is, where 
return from the property is safe under systems of order, 
and only endangered by periods of convulsion. It is this 
principle alone, though exhibited in its weakest and most 
inoperative form, which has saved France from Paris and 
Lyons, and stayed the Communism engendered in urban 
populations, by the votes of proprietors in land. While, 
on the contrary, one main cause of the brief duration of 
all the ancient republics was the preponderance of the 
urban over the rural classes; — with them there was but 
one word for the State and the City. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 171 

Is there, then, no danger in converting the sole conserv- 
ing and retentive classes of the State into those most in- 
different to your institutions, and least interested in that 
order of things which has condemned them alone to sacri- 
fice and calamity, and denied to them alone all mitigation 
of injury ? Consider the incessant fluctuations, from well- 
being to adversity, to which that part of your population 
dependent chiefly or largely on foreign trade and foreign 
competition is exposed. Consider that at any time, despite 
the repeal of the Corn Law, the manufacturing operatives 
must be subject to sudden distress; that sudden distress 
with them springs at once into loud disaffection ; that 
they never want the agitator and the leader : And w r hen 
you would turn for aid, not to the bayonet of the soldier 
(I at least will not speak of that), but to the opinion of 
the class on which, of old, without repeal, you could peace- 
fully rely, is there no chance that you may find it sullen or 
neutral in the senate ? — supine or hostile through the land ? 
It is not that the members of that class would sympathise 
with the cause which threatened disorder ; it is simply that 
they may have ceased to feel interest in the order endan- 
gered. No proprietor, no gentlemen, felt interest in the 
cause of the mob that surrounded the Tuileries; they 
had only ceased to feel interest in the principles of 
government which Louis Philippe represented. Their 
interest did not awake till afterwards, when life was 
threatened by the blood-red banner of the terrorist, and 
property was proclaimed a theft by the schoolmen of Com- 
munism. 

Believe me, these are no idle fears ; they come from close 
observation of the temper of the cultivators and inhabitants 
of the land. Scorn, O Free-Trader, if you will, my views 
of your theory ; despise me, if you will, as reasoner, logi- 
cian, scholar, investigator of historical precedent, or ex- 
aminer into the theories and abstract principles of science. 
But few will deny, however exaggerated in all else be my 
reputation as a writer, that, where the reputation has been 
the most acknowledged, it rests upon some truth in ob- 
serving the springs of human action. It is as the habitual 
and long-experienced observer of men that I utter this 
warning. It is my hope and belief that the warning will 
not be in vain. 



172 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

If you say, " Grant that your apprehensions are just as 
to the danger from irritation in one class, is there not a 
danger as great in provoking the resentment of others 
more numerous ? Remember this is a question of exports 
to the manufacturer ; it is more, a question of the price of 
bread to the people." If you say this, I reply, that I know 
and feel most deeply the importance of those considerations 
in popular opinion ; and, though exports are not in them- 
selves a guarantee of the prosperity of the manufacturer, 
nor the cheapness of food an unequivocal test of the phy- 
sical well-being and social advance of the labouring popula- 
tion, yet I think that Lord Derby has acted wisely, and 
shown that, in this respect, he comprehends the duty of 
the conciliator when he has taken Free- Traders themselves 
for authorities, and proposed a moderate fixed duty, on 
which any rise in price to the farmer cannot, in the judg- 
ment of profound economists, raise in practice the price of 
the loaf beyond what at least would be immediately coun- 
terbalanced by custom to the tradesman — improved home 
market to the manufacturer, and rise of wages to the 
labourer; a rise, under such a duty, sufficiently slight 
to conciliate him who sells his work, sufficiently just 
not to ruin him who hires it ; a duty, in short, (to 
repeat the deliberate opinion of Mr. M'Culloch,) that 
would " be innocuous in scarce years, when importa- 
tion is necessary, and not only be advantageous to the 
agriculturist, but redound to the advantage of the other 
classes." * 

Much misconception prevails when our opponents seem 
to confound the consideration of this single claim with a 
repeal of the general tariff. Neither Lord Derby, nor any 
chief in his party, has proposed to reverse the commercial 
policy commenced, or to interfere with those articles the 
greater cheapness of which now diminishes the yearly 
expense of the consumer. It is but on a single article that 
it is proposed to raise a revenue on the foreigner, to be 
devoted towards a reduction of the most grievous tax on 
the national community ; and with the indirect conse- 
quence, though with the acknowledged view, of relieving a 

" * Eefer to the quotation from Mr. M'Culloch, (pp. 125, 126) on the advan- 
tages of a fixed Dutj r to all classes. 



LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 173 

vast class of our countrymen whom our Legislature con- 
demns to severe trial, and has no other practical means to 
assist. 

Let the agriculturists contrast by their own moderation 
the vehement intolerance which would deny all relief to 
their distress, and it will be impossible to revive against 
them, at least to any degree that would justify alarm, the 
agitation which is held forth as the main argument to pre- 
vent concession to what suffering demands as justice, and 
political economy commends as wisdom. Far more cause 
for alarm in the despair of hearts hitherto so attached to 
your institutions, and the progressive decay of an interest 
so essential to the welfare of all. It is difficult to agitate 
the humanity of England against distress : And though, 
as yet, the distress of the agriculturist may have but par- 
tially reacted on the rest of the community, enough has 
been felt to make " sensible men" of every rank rejoice at 
any reasonable proposition by which it may be mitigated, 
and separate themselves from the unworthy clamour by 
which it may be sought to drown the groans of their suffer- 
ing countrymen. 

A moderate fixed duty will still leave to the agriculturist 
a sufficiently sharp competition with the foreigner ; as it 
will still leave to the manufacturer the regular market 
assured by the opening of our ports ; leave to the general 
consumer the cheapness effected by the various modifica- 
tions of our tariffs ; and to the labourer it will sustain 
wages, by sustaining the capital from which wages are 
derived. To a competition thus mitigated, the farmer will 
brace all the energies which competition — when it over- 
tasks the strength and sickens the hope — can only enfeeble 
and relax. Whatever relief to his pecuniary resources this 
concession—made in time — will afford, greater still will be 
the stimulus to spirit and courage which comes from all 
sympathy in human struggles ; great the benefit to the 
agriculturist, greater far to our social fabric, if you diminish 
the fear with which the son of the soil, the originator of all 
national capital, now anticipates the future — soften the 
spirit with which he confronts the present — reconcile class 
to class — smooth obstacles to progressive legislation — lessen 
dangers in those crises in which progress is exchanged fo* 
convulsion. And, therefore, from the depth of my heart, 



174 LETTERS TO JOHN BULL, ESQ. 

and moved by interests that sway me far more as patriot 
than proprietor — as citizen than landowner — I say to the 
Constituencies of the empire, " Lose not the first occasion 
to conciliate the cultivators of the land you live in ! " 

Forgive, my dear John, this long infliction on your 
patience; and believe in the truth of 

Your loyal and anxious Servant, 

A Labourer and a Landlord, 

Edward Bulwer Lytton. 



PAUL LOUIS COUKIER— HIS LIFE AND 
WRITINGS. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM. 



It has long been my intention to devote some pages of 
this Journal f to the manes of Paul Lonis Courier, in the 
hope of bringing my English readers to a better acquaint- 
ance with some of the most remarkable writings, and one 
of the most extraordinary men that France, in her later 
day, has produced. Every time has its peculiar represen- 
tative, and the genius of a single man is often the incarna- 
tion of the intellectual character of his co temporaries. 
There was only one period in the history of France that 
could have produced Courier, — he is the man of that period. 
He gathered once more into a focus those rays of light that 
had been scattered into a thousand vague refractions by 
the violent effects of the Revolution. He is the sequel to 
Voltaire. What Btranger is to verse, Courier is to prose. 
His life is of no less singular character than his works. 

Born at Paris, in 1773, the parentage of Paul Louis 
Courier was exactly that which was calculated to form in 
after times the derider of the vices of a noblesse. His father 
was a man of some literary pretensions and of competent 
wealth ; — he was a Bourgeois — an able, witty, intellectual 
Bourgeois. As such he seems to have mixed in the society 
of the nobles, and to have very narrowly escaped death for 
his presumption. A certain nobleman of great rank owed 
our citizen a large sum of money ; it was inconvenient to 
pay it, so he ordered his creditor to be assassinated. True 

* [Truth is all to all.] 

f [This paper was originally published in the Xew Monthly Magazine 
for March, 1833.] 



176 PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 

that he did not allege the debt as a reason for the proposed 
murder. He gave a more gallant air to the proceeding, 
and accused the Bourgeois of having seduced his wife. A 
jealous husband in those days was not common ; — but then 
every husband did not owe the object of his jealousy a con- 
siderable sum of money. 

If M. Courier escaped death, he did nofc escape banish- 
ment ; and he felt himself obliged to become an inhabitant 
of one of the cantons of Toulouse. He gave himself up to 
the education of the young Paul Louis. Our hero early 
developed his peculiar genius, — quick, facile, and impatient. 
He evinced no turn for the mathematics, but a vehement 
passion for ancient letters. In these his taste was formed 
on no very judicious model. He was fond of the Rheto- 
ricians, and considered Isocrates a model. In after life his 
latent genius was no doubt influenced by these youthful 
studies. You may trace in his writings all the art of rhe- 
toric, but he studiously avoids its language. He is the only 
rhetorician in whom simplicity is the most remarkable 
feature. Those were not, however, the times for Isocrates 
and rhetoric. The war against France required soldiers 
for the frontiers, and confined the demand for sophists to 
the metropolis. Paul Louis entered a school of artillery, 
and at the age of twenty behold the young officer hastening 
to join the armies of the Rhine. Never was there a more 
singular recruit : with considerable valour of constitution, 
Paul Louis had already formed a most philosophical in- 
difference to glory. Compelled to be a soldier, he walked 
the stage as an actor who laughs in his sleeve at the wilful 
delusion of the audience. He saw the paint on the scene, 
and heard the voice of the prompter; and when the galleries 
were shouting applause at the effects, our actor was scru- 
tinizing the tricks which produced them. He mixed among 
that fiery and passionate army, with its boy soldiers and 
its stripling leader,* like Jaques amidst the gallant foresters 
of Ardens, for purposes not theirs, and feeding thoughts 
they could not comprehend. But he was a Jaques without 
melancholy. 

While his young compatriots, all ardent for the new 
Republic, strove with each other who should advance the 

* Hoche, the commandant on the Rhine, was twenty-three. 



PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 177 

soonest to death for her cause, — while honours showered 
daily upon their adventurous emulation, — Courier, never 
shunning danger, but never seeking fame, pursued his 
separate and strange career, — his genius unknown and his 
courses nncheered by the triumphs of success. He studied 
much, but the library of a camp is confined, and it was only 
among the books which he had read before. His literary 
patience was of a peculiar sort : he preferred refreshing his 
knowledge in one point to extending it in others. His 
diligence was inexhaustible when applied to favourite 
models; his apathy extraordinary towards subjects which 
did not naturally allure him. He was conscious of this his 
intellectual bias, and he speaks of it without affectation. 
The philosophical nature of his mind made him in politics 
consult the future rather than the past ; he had little love, 
therefore, for history, and he never mastered its study. 
The main defect of his mind was what is the rarest in 
men of genius — it was a lack of curiosity ! He had a 
great tendency to that dispiriting temper which is for ever 
damping your ardour with the question of cui bono ? Yet 
in this want of curiosity he was not consistent ; and in one 
point all the other traits of his character seem strongly 
contradicted. He was passionately fond of antiquities ; he 
would travel miles and court the most imminent dangers 
for a sight of some old ruin. And he wandered from the 
enthusiastic and ambitious soldiery that now held the ter- 
ritories of the Rhine and the soft Moselle, to pass long 
hours among the mouldering convents and shattered towers 
in which the dark memory of the middle ages is preserved. 
It is assuredly an anomaly in character that a man so in- 
different to the history of the Past, should be so attached 
to its relics, — that one so derisive of the feudal pomps 
should be so wedded to their trophies, — that so little 
reverence for the essence of antiquity should be united with 
such homage to its externals. I attribute the inconsistency 
to early circumstances. As a boy he had been accustomed 
to antiquarian researches, — his mind outgrew the passion 
for antiquity, but retained the taste for its remains. TTe 
may add to this, somewhat of the gratification of vanity ; 
for he was not only a diligent but a learned antiquarian ; 
he was an adept at inscriptions and the erudite mazes o£ 
hieroglyphical conjecture; so that his habits of research 



178 PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 

were probably endeared to him by the self-complacence of 
a triumphant ingenuity. 

In this life — brave without glory, and wise without 
success — Courier passed two years, feeling himself, in that 
rapid race of honour where he who died not to-day might 
be a general to-morrow, distanced by his contemporaries, 
and growing naturally discontented with his station. In 
1795 occurred the blockade of Mayence, and at that very 
time the elder Courier died. His mother was ill and 
wretched — Paul Louis left the army — left the blockade — 
and without leave, and with perfect nonchalance, returned 
to France. His filial affection was not, however, perhaps 
his sole inducement in hazarding the philosophy of deser- 
tion. The hardships endured by the French army before 
Mayence were exceedingly rigorous; they were by no means 
to the taste of a man who thought renown was no recom- 
pense. " It was wonderfully cold there," said the witty 
soldier ; " I thought myself frozen. Never was there a 
slighter distinction between a man and a crystallization. " 

The army proclaimed Paul Louis a deserter. Meanwhile 
Paul Louis shut himself up, and amused his leisure with 
translating the oration jpro Ligario. His friends managed 
to hush up the matter : the young soldier was grateful, — 
for it enabled him to give a better polish to his translation. 
The revolutionary war proceeded to its triumph. The star 
of Napoleon rose above the horizon : the grave melancholy 
that belonged to the Conventional moralities was broken 
up. People rushed into feasts and balls. Paul Louis 
caught the contagion with an avidity natural to his bold 
and lively temper ; and behold him now the gallant and 
the man of pleasure ! Passionately devoted to women, he 
gave himself wholly up to their society. Young, gay, and 
with a power of social wit rarely equalled, he became the 
rage at Toulouse. But his ill fortune pursued him from 
the camp to the chamber ; and an unlucky intrigue made 
Toulouse no longer a place of security. At the age of 
twenty-three a man without much difficulty forgives him- 
self these offences : I suspect that he manages to console 
himself with the same ease ! Banished Toulouse, Courier 
resumed his former career, and he set out to Italy to take 
the command of a company of artillery. 

Italy did not present to the gallant spirit of Courier, in- 



PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 179 

toxicated as it was by the adoration of beauty, and the 
reverence for departed art, those nnrningled sources of 
delight which earlier and later pilgrims have found amidst 
its ruins. The severe licentiousness of the young Napoleon 
was lavishly imitated by his coarser followers : the polished 
inhabitants of Italy met with no dainty respect from the 
new successors of the triumphant Gaul. Pillage and 
Rapine devastated the marble cities and the vine- clad 
plains. And what to Courier was more bitter than all, the 
noble relics of antique art, " the breathing canvas and the 
storied bust," were mangled, defaced, despoiled as the 
avarice or the ignorance of the hardy conquerors ordained. 
Too refined and too classical for his colleagues, Paul 
Courier deplored these excesses in terms scarcely less 
eloquent than we find in his later and more elaborate 
writings. His letters (on this subject) to a Pole of con- 
siderable attainments, whose friendship he bad acquired at 
Toulouse, are full of his characteristic graces. Byron's 
indignation at the rape of the Elgin marbles is tame beside 
that of Courier at the insulting spoliation of the Italian 
treasures, — Italy's last triumph, — her consolation in art for 
her degradation in history. The same cavalier and careless 
bravery that Courier had evinced on the banks of the 
Rhine, equally distinguished him among the ruins of 
Rome. Hated as a Frenchman, exposed day and night to 
the poignard of the assassin, he yet wandered alone and 
unguarded in the most solitary and perilous places. His 
love for antiquities (mingled with the growing passion for 
adventure, and it may be with a certain romance which his 
perception of the ridiculous would not allow him to own) 
was his sole guide. He followed it without fear. With, 
his sabre by bts side, he traversed the mountains of Italy, 
— explored the ruins, — braved the banditti; — Salvator 
Rosa himself was not more reckless of the poignards of 
the brigands, whom he afterwards immortalised ; — if 
Courier was often surprised by them he invariably escaped. 
He knew well the Italian language ; he was never without 
a certain bribe to the robber ; and, above all, at that happy 
age, and with that versatile temper, he possessed the art, 
better than much, gold, which, leads us to accommodate 
ourselves to all men, and supplies the absence of force by 
the exertion of ingenuity. In the day he sought the nioun- 

N 2 



]80 PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 

tain passes, — at night lie was assailed ; — the next morning 
he pursued his labours. He never feared the robber, — he 
never avenged the robbery. A certain generous tone of 
philosophy made him lenient to these wild banditti. He 
was a soldier, and he murdered by art ; was he to be vin- 
dictive to those who robbed by necessity ? 

In this eccentric manner, perfecting his mind, enjoying 
his life, and advancing not in his career, our extraordinary 
hero passed his Italian campaign : it nearly came to a pre- 
mature termination. 

Paul Louis was one of the division left by General Mac- 
donald at Home. The division capitulated : it was to quit 
Rome at a certain hour. " A la bonne heure" thought 
Courier; "a last look at the Vatican Library before I 
depart." What a type of. the careless courage of the 
soldier- student ! He repairs to the Vatican — plunges into 
study — forgets the hour of departure — and quits the 
Vatican when he himself is the sole Frenchman left at 
Rome. 

It was a calm, clear, and still evening. Nursing his 
reveries, Courier walked slowly along the streets of Rome. 
He was recognised as he passed beneath a lamp. A moment 
more ; a bullet whizzed by him — missed him — and lodged 
in the body of a Roman woman. In an instant the city 
was alarmed — -the crowd gathered — Courier dashed through 
the midst of the mob, and reached the palace of a Roman 
of his acquaintance : through his aid he escaped. He em- 
barked at Marseilles, and arrived at Paris ; but not without 
new disasters. On his road he was despoiled of his 
baggage and his money ; and, what was worse, a pulmonary 
complaint attacked him, from which he never entirely 
recovered. 

At Paris, however, he renewed his former career of 
pleasure, but pleasure of a more refined and literary cast. 
Time had already begun to mellow the Passionate into the 
Intellectual. He mixed with the learned of his day ; he 
was welcomed by some of the more eminent amongst them. 
That ambition of a circle, from which no Frenchman is 
free, animated his powers ; and he wrote some works which 
then were but little known to the public, but are not, for 
that reason, unworthy of his fame. It often happens 
among literary men that their best works are neglected, 



PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 181 

till some lucky book gains the author a name ; they arc then 
sought for, studied, and admired. Genius revives its own 
deceased ; and the world, once taught to admire an author 
for one work, lifts the stone from those its neglect has 
already buried. 

From these pursuits and these circles, Courier was 
aroused by a summons to command a body of artillery 
stationed in Italy, which now lay supine, and seemingly 
reconciled, beneath the yoke of Napoleon. Among the 
softer and more poetical characteristics of Courier's mind, 
his passion for Italy was not the least remarkable. Not 
Jacopo Foscari himself loved with a more yearning and 
filial tenderness the bright air and the genial skies of that 
divine land. Courier cared nothing for the rank they gave 
him, and everything for the place assigned to it. He 
arrived, then, in Italy, — arrived in time to witness one of 
the most singular farces in the history of the world, and 
which the pen of more than one memorialist has already 
rendered so amusing. Buonaparte, tired with being Consul, 
wanted to be Emperor ; — he was Emperor. He wanted 
now to know what the army thought about the change : 
an order arrived for the taking the opinion of the dif- 
ferent regiments. These strokes of policy, where it is 
advantageous to say " Yes," dangerous to say "No," and 
wise to say nothing at all, usually succeed. Shakspeare 
has described their effect admirably in " Richard the 
Third": — 

" Tliey spake not a word ; 
But, like dumb statues or breathing stones 
Stared at each, other. * * * 

****** 

"When he had done, some followers of mine own, 

At lower end o' the hall, hurled up their caps, 

And some ten voices cried, ' God save King Richard ! ' 

And thus I took the vantage of those few : 

' Thanks, gentle citizens and friends,' quoth I." 

These lines explain tolerably well the nature and the result 
of the questions put to the French army. 

The great trait of Courier's character was — (I can 
scarcely translate the word) — insouciance. We trace it 
everywhere — in every action. It curbed his military ardour 
— tant mieux; it chilled his patriotism — taut pis. He 
resisted not the proposal ; he continued to serve under 



182 PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 

Napoleon; and he contented himself, en philosophe et a fa 
Frangaise, with a fine saying and a witticism — " Ftre Buona- 
parte et se faire Sire ! il aspire d descendre" * In fact, 
the essence of Courier's darker and sterner nature was 
contempt: where he was not indifferent he despised. 
" Buonaparte loves his rattle ; let him have it ! The 
people will obey the puppet. Poor people ! — be it so." 
This was the spirit with which he viewed the nascent 
despotism. He had the disdain of Cassius, but not his 
energy. If he had been a contemporary and countryman 
of Brutus, he would have said the best thing against 
Caesar, but have struck no blow. He subscribed to the 
new dynasty ; and amused himself with painting it in 
some letters of inimitable satire. His course of conduct 
in this has been vindicated, — I think, without success. 
The Directory, say his advocates, was a wretched govern- 
ment, — feeble and venal. The Consulship had lasted too 
short a time for trial. What did you lose by gaining; an 
Emperor? The answer is obvious; — you lost Hojpe. A 
republic purifies itself naturally, — a monarchy only by great 
efforts. A republic wants but time, — a despotism wants 
new revolutions. What was to be hoped from a sway like 
Napoleon's, which crushed the Press, and resolved all the 
elements of knowledge into — Military Schools? Paul 
Courier was a philosopher, — he knew these truths ; — but 
he was a philosopher for himself as well as for others. A 
better excuse for him is in his position. What could he 
do ? — an undistinguished officer in the artillery, what was 
his consent to, or his rejection of, the empire of Napoleon ? 
We judge too much in estimating the actions of men, and 
the good they might have effected, by the rankz^e attribute 
to their intellectual powers, without remembering that it is 
only when those powers have become acknowledged that 
their possessors can aspire to play their legitimate part. 
But patriotism, to be a strong passion, must be a common 
passion. You cannot inspire the individual, unless you 
first form the nation ; and public integrity in Prance was 
at that time at the lowest possible ebb. Despite its false 
liberty, its laughable citizenship, its terrible republic, 
France scarcely knew one sound principle of legislation ; 

* [" To be Buonaparte and to make himself Sire ! he aspires to descend !"] 



PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 183 

or, after the extinction of the eloquent Girondists, produced 
one honourable coiys of men. Courier himself boasted 
that he was able to show letters from the most eminent 
men of the empire, who followed, like dogs, the track of 
the times, — Republicans — Buonapartists — Bourbonists — 
according as a shilling was to be gained : — " Men who 
commence their destiny en sansculottes, and finish it en 
habits de cour" The success of vice is the discouragement 
of virtue. 

In 1808, Courier, having long and vainly demanded leave 
of absence to revisit his home, gave in his resignation. He 
returned to Paris, and proclaimed an eternal renunciation 
of his military trade. 

At this time the wild but solemn fate of Napoleon was 
rapidly hurrying towards its great, but unrecognised close. 
His destiny was at its height : and the height of some men 
is the main step to their fall. Scarce returned from Spain, 
which his presence alone had almost conquered, he now 
swept onto the armies gathered by the Danube, which he 
was to lead to the city of the House of Hapsburg. All 
Paris was in a paroxysm of excitement, and Courier caught 
something of the contagion. To understand well the cha- 
racter of this singular man, we must consider him as one 
fond of studying the peculiar phases and aspects of his 
kind, and scrutinizing rather than sharing their passions. 
He looked upon the events which engross and absorb the 
more vulgar, but warmer spirits, with an artist's inquiring 
eye. The pomp of empire, the laurels of war, the rewards 
of ambition, were to him but testimonials of human delu- 
sion, and food for a just, and not malevolent, satire ; yet, 
at this period of his life, his wonted philosophy seems to 
have forsaken him, and he became one of the worshippers 
of the Echo. He had never yet served under Napoleon ; 
he now resolved to do so. He communicated his intention 
to none of his friends ; he repaired secretly to the army. 
Having once resigned, his re-admission, according to the 
military rules of Napoleon, was not easy. He gained 
access to the tent of a general of the artillery ; and, with- 
out any peculiar station, became once more a French 
soldier. 

Something — (I apprehend, in examining his character, 
his letters, and the common elements of human nature) — ■ 



184 PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 

something of sore and mortified feeling, of the conscious- 
ness of great powers and a foiled career, had led him to this 
determination. On his late return to Paris he had found 
how entirely military reputation engrossed the public 
voice ; his philosophy might, in the main, support him in 
his obscurity, but not perhaps at all times. He had had his 
opportunities, and he had failed ! This was the sole inter- 
pretation the public could attach to his career ; a bitter 
verdict to a man of pride and genius, who had not yet 
found, amidst the depths of an undeveloped intellect, the 
triumphant answer of self-acquittal. He had arrived too at 
an age in which a man is often more sensible to mortifica- 
tion than at an earlier period ; the season of promise, at the 
age of seven-and-thirty, is well nigh over, and the world 
begins to ask for performance. The love, too, of pleasure 
— of women and of strange adventure — is cooled ; and be- 
fore we resign ourselves to a calm and obscure life, we are 
often willing to make one sterner attempt than heretofore 
at glory. Courier, perhaps too, had some sympathy with 
the genius, if not with the temper and fortunes of Napoleon 
— the higher minds are attracted toward each other. He 
thought (this is evident from his letters) that Napoleon 
might appreciate him. Mocked or slighted by inferior 
men, he felt his powers, and hoped the penetration of a 
great man might avenge the neglect. Whatever were his 
motives, Courier joined the camp ; — joined — for forty- 
eight hours ! What scenes were crowded into that 
time. 

Hitherto Courier had beheld war by samples, he now 
beheld it wholesale. Never yet had he seen whole regi- 
ments swept away beneath the deadly fires — never yet for 
his ear had the music of four hundred pieces of cannon risen 
above a soil of trampled and quivering flesh. Never yet 
had he fully comprehended the wide vastness of the desola- 
tion of War ! He himself speaks of the horror, the pity, 
the disgust which seized him ; — a sort of sickness closed 
around his senses, which were usually so keen — everything 
passed before him like grotesque phantasmagoria ; — he 
sank, at last, overcome by exhaustion, at the foot of a tree 
— he recovered not until he was within the walls of 
Vienna. Prom that time he required no further conviction 
of the scourge of war. The theories of life were faint to 



PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 185 

the practical experience of those terrible hours ; nay, he 
thenceforward even denied genius to generalship ; he con- 
tended, that all was disorder, and the resnlt chance. He 
laughed at the phrase — the art of war ; a great battle con- 
veyed to him the notion of a chaos incompatible with the 
providence of an intellectual design. 

As he sought the campaign, so he left it — abruptly, 
silently, and with his usual arrogance, as a free agent. He 
thought to lose the bloody memory of two days in a land 
that Nature consecrated to love, — and he sought, once more, 
his favourite Italy. 

He took up his abode at Florence, and renewed his 
studies in Greek literature. But poor Paul Louis was not 
born under a lucky star, and he could not even study Greek 
with impunity. His ill fortune led him to read the pastoral 
romance of 4; Longus "' in manuscript — no trifling affliction 
in itself — but unhappily, this MS. which was in the 
Laurentine library, contained a passage to be found iu no 
other printed edition of the tale — nay it supplied a terrible 
chasm well known to the learned, which has hitherto 
yawned in a certain part of the romance. Imagine the 
rapture of the student. With trembling hands he hastened 
to copy out the passage, and in his ecstacy he contrived to 
upset the inkstand over the precious passage. The 
librarians were furious — they swore that he had spoiled 
the Greek copy on purpose, so that he might pillage its 
spoils, and be the only one to arrogate the possession. The 
Frenchman had not perhaps that hardihood of nerve which 
our periodical critics ultimately bestow upon an English 
victim. He could not resist unburthening himself in a 
reply. He addressed this effusion to M. Renouard, 
Librarian of Paris, and he transferred all the blame from 
himself to his Italian accusers. His sole crime, he said, 
was being a Frenchman ; and it was not the spilling of 
ink, but the spilling of blood, that rose in judgment against 
him. The letter made a noise — attention was riveted to 
the writer and his inkstand — when lo ! — it came out that 
the copier of " Longus " was the deserter at TVagram. 
From two such crimes there was no easy escape — but, 
however, the constitutional dexterity of Courier carried 
him safe from the result of his constitutional imprudence. 
Ink, liable to such accidents, was nevertheless considered 



186 PAUL LOUIS COUEIEB. 

too dangerous for use, and he was enjoined upon no account 
to dip his pen into it again. He obeyed the command 
during his sojourn in Italy. In travel and in study the 
years rolled on — peace was proclaimed — Buonaparte was 
at St. Helena — and Paul Louis Courier was married! 
Two of these events were important enough to the world, 
the third was not wholly unimportant to Paul Louis 
Courier ! 

From this time the wilder portion of life closed for him. 
The soldier — the adventurer — 'the wanderer — were no 
more. He sat himself down in his paternal vineyards, 
and commenced, in the beautiful seclusion of Touraine, 
the date of a more bright career. Inspired by the strong 
disdain which he felt for the rule, weak and violent, of the 
Bourbons after the Restoration — Paul Courier, in 1816, 
addressed the two Chambers on behalf of the inhabitants 
of Luynes, in a short petition of sonis seven or eight pages, 
which sufficed, however, to produce a very considerable 
sensation. This petition is a narrative of the oppression 
and injustice committed against a village. The narrative 
of a village was a narrative applicable to all Prance. When 
he stated the frivolous grounds of accusation — when he 
stated the rigour of suspicion — the bigotry of fear — which 
had converted a village of honest peasants into a herd of 
discontented and wronged men, he was appealing to the 
common sense of Prance, and he was answered at once by 
the common heart. The style of this petition is simple yet 
elaborate ; biting irony — generous complaint — severe truth 
— are condensed in periods that remind you of Voltaire, 
but without Voltaire's affectation. M. Decazes, Minister 
of Police, courted this new and formidable writer. Courier, 
in his visits to Paris, visited his salons, and obtained by 
that complaisance some good for his fellow villagers and 
himself. That done, he was no more a courtier. 

M. Clavier, an Academician, died. Courier demanded 
admission into the Academy of Inscriptions. He was re- 
jected — he revenged himself by a letter " A Messieurs cle 
l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres." This letter 
contains yet stronger evidence of his powers of irony, than 
his petition to the two Chambers ; but the subject was less 
popular, and it mad*) lass noise. In 1819 he commenced 
his famous letters to the editor of the " Censor." The 



PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 187 

publication of these brief and stinging writings brought the 
name of Courier into every one's mouth — and inquiry 
turning, as it is wont to do, when a man begins to attract 
celebrity, — from the work to the author, found sufficient to 
interest the public in his person ; and thus doubly to in- 
crease the charm and fascination of his genius. 

This accomplished traveller, this profound student, lived 
in an obscure village, affecting and proud to affect the 
simple life and habits of the peasant. His vineyards and 
his woods were his chief occupation, and yielded him his 
revenue. He called himself Paul Louis Vigneron — he pre- 
tended to no superiority over his fellow villagers — he was 
one of them in all but knowledge. His style happily 
united the two opposite characteristics he assumed — the 
scholar and the peasant — at once most classical and most 
familiar ; style irresistible alike to the academy and the 
marketplace. "No man ever made elegance so popular, or 
homeliness so elegant. He polished with great labour, but 
the polish only rendered the diction and the sense trans- 
parent to the dullest comprehension. In 1821 appeared 
fche Simple JJiscours. The occasion was this, it was pro- 
posed to purchase the Park of Chambord for the young 
Duke of Bordeaux. This proposition Courier opposed. 
Hence the Simple JDlscours. 

' ; If, (he begins this incomparable pamphlet) if we had 
so much money that we did not know what to do with it 
— if all our debts were paid — our highways repaired — our 
poor relieved — and our church (for God before all things) 
restored, and its windows glazed — I think, my friends, 
that the best thing we could do with the surplus would be 
to contribute with our neighbours to rebuild the Bridge of 
St. Aventin ; which, shortening by one good league the 
distance between us and Tours, would augment the price 
and the produce of land throughout the neighbourhood. 
That in my opinion would be the best employment for our 
superfluous capital, — that is to say, whenever we possess it. 
But to buy Chambord for the Duke of Bordeaux — I cannot 
agree to it : no, not even if we had the means. It would 
be but a bad scheme, in my opinion, for the Duke himself, 
for us, and for Chambord. If you will listen to me, I will 
tell you why. It is a holiday, my friends, and we have 
time to chat over the matter." 



188 PAUL LOUIS COUEIEE. 

In this familiar manner, Paul Louis, Vigneron de la Cha- 
voniiiere, throws off his biting truths. He confesses that 
the courtiers are inclined to the purchase ; " but our senti- 
ments," saith he, wittily, "are very different from those 
of the courtiers — they love the Prince in proportion to 
what he gives them — we in proportion to what he 
leaves us." 

" The notion is entertained (says the government) of 
purchasing Chambord by the Commons of France, for the 
Duke of Bordeaux. The notion is entertained — by whom 
pray ? By the Ministry ? No ; they would not conceal so 
beautiful a thought, or content themselves with the mere 
honour of approval upon such an occasion. By the Prince, 
then ? God forbid that his first idea — his first gleam of 
reason should be of so singular a character — that the desire 
of our money should enter his young head, even before the 
passion for sugar plums and rattles ! Do the Commons 
then entertain the agreeable notion ? Not ours certainly 
on this side of the Loire, &c." 

How happily afterwards Courier proceeds to comment 
on the cant anecdote of Titus ! — 

"A preceptor — an abbe of the Court, now teaches our 
young princes the science of history. Be sure he does not 
forget to make them admire that excellent Emperor Titus, 
who was so great an adept in the art of donation, that he 
thought every day was lost in which he did not give some- 
thing away. So that one never saw him without being made 
happy — happy, you understand, my friends, with a pension, 
a sinecure — a handful of the popular money. Such a 
prince is sure to be adored by all those who are admitted 
to court, and drive about the streets in their state car- 
riages " — "La cour l'idolatrait — mais le peuple ? Le 
peuple ? il n'y en avait pas, l'histoire n'en dit rien 
. . . Voila les elemens d'histoire qu'on enseignait alors 
aux princes."^ 

To my taste this is the most perfect in point of union 
between satire and logic of all Courier's works. I know 
nothing like it in political literature — it is a political 
library in itself. For this production he was of course 

* [" The court idolized him — but the people ? The people ? There were 
no people : history said nothing about them. . . Behold the elements of 
history then taught to princes."] 



PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 189 

imprisoned. They punished him for writing truth so well 
by a fine of three hundred francs, and a confinement of 
two months. Poor Paul Louis ! " Pray God for him ! " 
cries he himself in his address aux times devotes, — " may 
his example teach us never to say what we think of those 
gentlemen who live at o«ar expense." Courier published a 
pamphlet relative to his trial, which proved how indomit- 
able wit is against persecution ; and the day of his release 
from prison they brought him up for a new trial for a 
pamphlet of the most exquisite composition, called " Peti- 
tion pour les Villageois qu'on empeche de danser." The 
peasants had been accustomed to dance every Sunday on 
the usual spot allotted in the French villages to that 
amusement. The Prefet forbade the dance. Courier 
demands the restoration of the old and harmless pleasure. 
Nothing can be more touching than his description of the 
manners, the good order, the improving morality of his 
poor neighbours ; nothing more convincing than his argu- 
ments on their behalf. They did not think it quite right 
to imprison a man for wishing the peasants to dance, so 
this time they let him off with a reprimand. From that 
date persecution begat its usual result, secrecy; and 
Courier contrived to publish, but under a mask — a mask 
which concealed his name but not his genius. I pass over 
his " Replies to anonymous correspondents," one of which, 
the second, contains more eloquent and pathetic passages 
than any other of his tracts. I pass over the " Livret de Paul 
Louis," a brilliant sketch, in which, however, the author 
displays the usual ignorance of a Frenchman on English 
history, when he observes that literary men have but little 
knowledge of business, and that Bolingbroke repented of 
having employed Addison and Steele ! — Bolingbroke's bit- 
terest opponents ! I pass too over the " Gazette du Vil- 
lage," a polished and most subtle piece of irony. I pass 
over the few pages contained in the " Piece Diplo- 
matique," which is supposed to be a letter from Louis of 
France to the King of Spain, and which at least no Bour- 
bon could have written. I come to the most admired — the 
most laboured — the last of all Courier's writings, the 
" Pamphlet des Pamphlets." This, I say, is esteemed in 
France the most perfect and matured specimen of his 
style. Imagine how wonderful, how expressive that style 



190 PAUL LOUiS COURIER. 

must be, when we apply the epithets elaborate — finished 
— even great — to writings scarcely exceeding in length 
a newspaper article ! For my own part, I still hold to 
my opinion that the " Simple Discours " is the best and 
fullest of Courier's works — it has more thought and more 
wisdom than the " Pamphlet des Pamphlets;" — its wit, 
too, is more racy, and its diction more striking, if less 
pure. Anything seemingly English in sentiment was at 
that day sure to be popular in France ; and in this pamphlet 
Courier supposes an English patriot, to whom he attributes 
a letter to himself, — excellent, indeed, but scarcely charac- 
teristic of the tone of English patriots. The merit of the 
work scarcely strikes upon an English ear ; it consists in 
the eloquence with which Courier vindicates himself from 
being a pamphleteer — a term of disgrace in the vocabu-' 
lary of French ion ton — a title not discreditable with us, 
always excepting the refined judgment of my Lord of 
Durham, who could find nothing worse to say of Bishop 
Philpotts of Exeter ! To an English reader the vindication 
loses its charm because we feel no venom in the charge. 
The conclusion, however, of this tract is deeply impressive ; 
it speaks of the shortness of human life — of the eternity of 
human improvement — of the feebleness of individuals — of 
the power of the mass. It hath in it a certain solemn and 
warning voice, preceding as it did the untimely and bloody 
end of the bold preacher. It reminds us of the deep 
pathos of those lines, some of the latest that Byron ever 
wrote, and to which we link the associations of his own 
death : — 

" Between two worlds life hovers like a star, — 
'Twixt night and mom npon the horizon's verge ; 
How little do we know that which we are ! 
How less what we may be ! The eternal surge 
Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar 
Our bubbles." 

While Courier was thus occupying the mind of the 
public, and while he employed his more learned hours in 
the study of his favourite Greeks, he seems to have shared 
the ordinary fate of genius ; — lie was no prophet in his own 
country ! 

A certain fretf ulness and acerbity of temper had come 
upon him with years; always eccentric in his habits, be 



PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 191 

became gradually rnorose in his humours ; he quarrelled 
with his neighbours, and was at war with his own house- 
hold. Much is to be said on his behalf, beyond the 
common and valid excuse for the peevishness of literary 
men in overwrought nerves and a feverish imagination. 
The mind wears the body, and the body reacts upon the 
temper. This is clear — it is inevitable — we require no 
waste of sentiment upon so plain a matter. Poor Courier 
had other excuses ; he had done much for his village, 
and his villagers were ungrateful ; this wounded him, and 
justly. He was not too, I suspect, happy in his marriage ; 
he believed he had cause for jealousy ; and to a man so 
proud the suspicion was no light curse. From the gloom 
of his obscurity went forth a burning light among the 
nations, but it came from the midst of discomfort, and 
the hearth of strife ; — petty bickerings, and village annoy- 
ances disturbed the serenity once natural to his consti- 
tution. His very fame produced Lim but enemies. He 
had offended the Valetaille of France, and France, in his 
own words, was le plus valet de tons les peiuples. But the 
mortification and the harassment were now drawing to a 
close — the triumph of genius and the exhaustion of the 
nerves were alike to cease. He beheld before him the apex 
of his fame ; and he stood, while he gazed, upon the verge 
of the grave. 

On the 10th of April, 1825, Courier left his house — 
he had spoken but little that day — an evident gloom had 
hung over him. He was borne back to his door a corpse ; 
— within a few paces from his home he had been found, 
pierced by some secret bullet, and quite dead. His 
assassin is unknown to this day. The rash enthusiasts 
of liberty, often the most illiberal of men, laid the crime 
on the Jesuits, but without a shadow of proof. One 
nearest and dearest to himself was, not long since, accused 
of abetting in the murder, and acquitted. A man of low 
birth, of whom he had been jealous, was, some time after 
his death, murdered himself; but eight years have passed, 
and the sentence of life for life has had no formal record. 
Peace to his ashes ! — they will not rest the less tranquilly, 
nor will the turf above them be less green, because ven- 
geance is still left in the hands of God ! 

The countenance of Courier was grave and thoughtful ; 



192 PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 

the brow high, broad, massive, and deeply marked ; liis 
eye somewhat sunk and melancholy — his month sarcastic 
and flexile. His manners varied at various periods of his 
life. I have met with some who knew him well, and 
considered him the most delightful of companions. I have 
known others who considered him the most repellant. In 
his later days he had transferred the graces from his habits 
to his style. Perhaps few men, with advantage to the 
temper, can begin the career of letters late in life. It 
requires several years to harden us to the abuse, the ingra- 
titude, the wilful misinterpretation, and the gnawing 
slander we endure from our contemporaries and our 
rivals. In youth we have years to spare to the apprentice- 
ship ; in mature age the pride is more stubborn, and the 
hope less sanguine. 

As a writer Courier must rank amongst the most classical 
of his language ; in vigour, in wit, in logic, he defies all 
comparison among his contemporaries. They who would 
learn to what degree the polish and power of style have 
advanced in Prance since the peace, should read, not the 
inflated paradoxes of Chateaubriand, or the extravagant 
exaggerations of Victor Hugo ; but those pages in which 
Courier has indeed made words things, and in which the 
plainest truths are conveyed with the most marvellous art. 
To the strength of Junius he adds the simplicity and the 
playfulness of Pascal. He fails, however, in imagination, 
and his thoughts are usually more bold than profound. 
This is remarkable rather in his literary than his political 
remains, for popular political writing does not of necessity 
demand the profound ; its merit is often to familiarise, not 
to invent, truth. In his preface to a new translation of 
Herodotus, we may especially detect the comparative want 
of depth in Courier's faculties — comparative, I say, to their 
power and versatility. He tells us, for instance, that the 
historical epic must cease for ever when the prose of a 
language has come to some perfection. He declares that 
the Greek literature is the only one not born of some other 
literature, but produced by instinct, and the sentiment of 
the beautiful, — mistakes which could not arise from a want 
of learning, but from a want of that reflection which 
stamps even the paradox of a profound intellect ; yet the 
same piece of writing is rich in sentences of beautiful and 



PAUL LOUIS COURIER. 193 

just criticism. Nothing can be better in its way than his 
description of conrtly translators playing the petit maitre 
with the simple language of the Greek; — nothing more 
true than his warning to his countrymen that the language 
of poetry is the last to be learnt in academies and courts. 
"Limitation" he says finely, — U V imitation cle la cour est 
lapeste du goat aussi bien que des mosurs" * 

Courier's style has been compared to that of the Editor 
of the " Examiner; " but Courier is more free and flowing 
— more adapted to the popular taste — more familiar and 
simple. On the other hand, he has not the iron grasp — 
the novel metaphor — the rich illustration, and the careless 
depth of remark which characterise the most standard and 
philosophic of our living periodical writers. He reminds 
us, I think, rather of Sydney Smith, but is less broad and 
more daring. In fact, his manner is so peculiarly and 
idiomatically French, that the English writer, who closely 
resembled him, would write ill. 

Paul Louis Courier is then no more !— his bright and 
short race is run ; — the various threads of his desultory 
and romantic life are prematurely and violently cut short. 
He has left to mankind not only the evidence of what he 
has achieved, but the belief of what greater results he had 
the capacity to accomplish. Living in a time of transition, 
when the people, passing from a brilliant despotism to a 
gloomy and imperfect freedom, scarcely knew whether to 
lament the one or to advance the other, his writings tended 
to destroy the illusion of the despotism, and to instil right 
notions as to the nature of freedom. No solemn plausi- 
bilities of men or of names deceived him. His mockery 
respected nothing — save the truth. He incorporated, in 
the form of his constitutional disdain, the popular con- 
tempt for the hollo wness and profligacy — the venality and 
the servility — which marked so strongly the character of the 
French court ; a court of slaves and traitors — of sharpers 
and of cowards — a court of nobles proud without honour, 
and subservient without loyalty. By expressing the con- 
tempt of the people he made their sentiments known to 
each other ; his genius was as a watchword of union, for it 

* [The imitation of the Court is the blight of taste as well as of 
manners.] 

C 



194 PAUL LOUIS COUEIEK. 

brought tliem together. The benefit effected by a bold 
public writer is this- — he acquaints the people, by his own 
popularity, "with the exact strength of the popular senti- 
ment ; he thus prepares the common mind r though he may 
not lead it ; — lie makes the impulse, and Chance the 
conduct ! 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER.* 

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



CHAPTER I. 

FIEST PERIOD. 



Schiller s boyhood — His parentage — Early studies and inclinations — His 
entranced the Military Academy — His youthful poems, and predilec- 
tions for the drama. 

Close by the village of Lorch. on the borders of Wur- 
teniberg, rise the ruins of a castle, the hereditary seat of 
the Counts of Hohenstaufen. The graves of that illus- 
trious family surround a couvent, placed upon a neighbour- 
ing eminence, and half hid by venerable limes. Upon 
another hill, stands an old chapel ; below, flows the river 
Hems, through luxuriant vineyards, and fertile corn-fields. 
Amidst the ruins of Hohenstaufen, or amidst the graves of 
its ancient lords, between the years 1766-68, might often 
be seen two children — a boy and girl, — so strongly resem- 
bling each other, as to denote their relationship as brother 
and sister.t Usually they were seen alone ; sometimes 
with young companions, — sometimes with a man in a 
military uniform, and in the vigour of life — to whom the 
boy, especially, listened with avidity, whether he explained 
the plan upon which the old Castle had been built, or 
pleased the infant spirit of adventure, by anecdotes of 
camp and field. ± More often, perhaps, their companion 
was a female, of mild exterior, and manners peculiarly 
gentle, though somewhat grave and serious. And she, 
too, found in the children, still more especially in the 

* [Written in 1347 and prefixed to a reprint of Lord Lytton's translation 
of the " Poems and Ballads of Schiller, " which were first collected into a 
volume in 1845", having appeared piecemeal from month to month hi the 
pages of "Blackwood's Magazine."] 

f Hoffmeister, Schwab. J Hofimeister. 

o 2 



196 THE LIFE OF SCHILLEE. 

boy, eager listeners to the talk by which she sought to 
instruct the understanding, or arouse the fancy. She 
had tales of witch and fairy to relate; — bat, as the 
children grew older, she preferred rather to please their 
imagination with verses from Klopstock, Gerhard, and 
the pious Gellert. More than all — she at once charmed 
and instructed her young pupils by stories and passages 
from the Gospel, adapted to their understanding ; and 
their tears flowed betimes at the sufferings of the Re- 
deemer.* Already, perhaps, the scenes which he loved 
to haunt, and certainly the subjects he was accustomed 
to hear, had produced strong and deep impressions 
upon the mind and character of the boy. Already he 
had conceived a passion for Nature — formed habits of 
reverie and reflection — and looked forward to the eccle- 
siastic profession, for which his parents designed him, with 
a religious and earnest enthusiasm. At eight years old, 
alone in the woodlands, with a boy about his own age, he 
exclaimed, " Karl, how beautiful is it here ! All — all 
could I give, so that I might not miss this joy ! " f His 
very sports partook of his serious character : nothing 
pleased him more than, by the help of a cap and a black 
apron, to assume the attire of the priest, mount a stool, and 
deliver extemporaneous and fervent homilies to an audience 
consisting of his mother and sisters. From his earliest 
childhood he was ever delighted to leave his infant games, 
to join the prayers or Bible lectures of the pious family to 
which he belonged; and his favourite sister has left a 
pleasing description of the child at; such moments — with 
his folded hands, his blue eyes raised to Heaven, and the 
fair hair clustering over the broad forehead which he 
inherited from his mother. But though from infancy 
unusually serious, and from infancy, also, impatient of 
restraint, his temper was sweet, and his disposition full 
of tenderness and compassion. If he met a poor child 
in his way to school, he would bestow on him all he 
had; even his books — his clothes were not sacred from 
the impulse of his compassion. "With all this softness 
of heart — this love of solitude, and this pious tem- 
perament, there was no less manifest a resolute and 

* Hofimeister, Schwab-. t Hoffmeister, Schwab. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 197 

determined spirit. He was peculiarly fond of reading 
Voyages and books of Travels ; and the Histories of 
popular heroes, such as Alexander the Great. He would 
often exclaim, " I must go into the world ! " His reveries 
were, in short, those that denote not an indolent temper, 
but an active mind. His musings were not merely day- 
dreams — they were animated by that zeal for inquiry 
which usually foretells, in childhood, the career of men 
destined to think boldly, and love truth. In his seventh 
year, one evening, during a storm of thunder and light- 
ning, the boy was missed at supper ; he was found at last 
at the top of a tall lime-tree, near the house, enjoying the 
tempest ; and, to quote his own apology, " wishing to see 
where so much, fire in the heavens came from ! " * — Such 
in childhood was the character of Johann Christoph 
Friedrich Schiller. 

His birth placed him in that condition, between wealth 
and penury — (a condition bordering two classes — the 
Popular and the Refined), which is perhaps the most 
favourable to intellectual eminence. 

His father, Johann Caspar Schiller, was of humble 
extraction, the son of a baker, who held the office of 
Bailiff in the village of Bittenfeld.f He was a man 
of an adventurous and restless character ; stern and 
severe indeed in manners, but warmly attached to his 
family, of good abilities, of exemplary probity, and a 
strong and fervent sense of religion. He had held the 
rank of Surgeon in a Bavarian regiment. In 1749, a 
year after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, he married Eliza- 
beth Dorothea Kodweiss, a young woman, born at Mar- 
bach (about eight miles from Stuttgart), of parentage 
suitable to his own ; though, it is said that her more 
distant descent could be traced to the noble house of 
Kottwitz.J 

After his marriage, Caspar Schiller resigned the medical 
profession ; but at the breaking out of the Seven Tears' 
War in 1757, entered the Wiirtemberg army as ensign and 
adjutant. It was not till after some years that their union 

* To this anecdote Schwab gives the weight of his anthorit}'. 

f Schwab. 

J Kattwitz, according to Hoffmeister — corrected by Schwab to Kottwitz. 



198 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

was blessed by children : Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, 
born 1757 ; Johann Christoph Friedrich, the poet, born at 
Marbach, Nov. 10, 1759 ;* Dorothea Louise, born two years 
afterwards ; and JNTannette, the youngest.t 

When Friedrich Schiller was six years old, his father, 
then risen to the rank of captain, was sent to Lorch as 
recruiting officer. Here the boy received the first regular 
rudiments of education, including Latin, and something 
even of Greek, from the clergyman of the parish, Philip 
Moser; whose name and virtues he afterwards immor- 
talised in " The Robbers." His favourite companions 
were, his eldest sister, and the son of his tutor, Karl Moser. 
But no observation is at once more true and more hackneyed 
than that it is to the easy lessons of a mother, men of 
genius have usually owed their earliest inspiration. 
Schiller's mother had tastes and acquirements rare in 
women of her rank : she was a good musician— fond of 
poetry, and even wrote it; and the gentleness of her temper 
gave a certain refinement to her manners. 

Friedrich Schiller was nine years old when his father 
1 7fiR was remove( l by ^ ne Grand Duke to Ludwigs- 
burg, and the boy was entered at the public 
school instituted at that place. The academical discipline 
revolted one who had already formed his own desultory 
modes of self- instruction, and his industry was reluctant 
and constrained. Still he passed his examinations with 
credit ; was ever one of the first in the Latin class to which 
he belonged, and received marks of approbation in the four 
several examinations he underwent before the School Com- 
missioners, at Stuttgart. His character betrayed itself 
rather with his playfellows than his preceptors. He ob- 
tained an ascendancy over them ; and his high spirit would 
brave those older and stronger than himself, if he sus- 
pected any intention to affront him. With his superiors 
he was reserved and awkward. But what, at this time, 
chiefly influenced his future fate, was the sight of 
the theatre at Ludwigsburg — the remembrance of that 
spectacle, which, according to the fashion of the day, 
seems to have been a gorgeous spectacle, half opera$- 

* "A few monllis later than our own Robert Burns." — Carlyle. 
f Two other children died soon after birth. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 199 

half melodrame, began to colour all his thoughts, and 
dictate the character of his sports in the hours of play. 
At the age of eleven, a change was noticeable -1 ^n 
in his habits; he shrank from the games in 
which he had been hitherto amongst the most active. In 
the playhours he wonld wander with some friend amongst 
the neighbouring plantations, and, in those moods of pre- 
mature gloom and speculation, which so often cloud the 
dawn of illustrious manhood, complain of present thral- 
dom, and form wild conjectures of future fate. Already 
he began to throw thought into verse — already he began 
to meditate the scheme of some elaborate tragedy. But 
his religious bias was still his strongest, and at -.^-o 
the age of fourteen he still shared the predilec- 
tions of his parents in favour of the ecclesiastical pro- 
fession. But now came the first great revolution and crisis 
of his life. 

Karl, Grand Duke of Wtirtemberg, a luxurious and 
ostentatious Prince, but one possessed of many excellent 
qualities, formed the notion of a great National Academy, 
first instituted at " Solitude," one of his country places, — 
afterwards transferred to Stuttgart. This establish- 
ment was called a Military Seminary, but not con- 
fined exclusively to those intended for the military 
profession. 

The majority of the pupils were, indeed, the sons of 
officers — or even privates — in the TTiirteniberg Army ; but 
the sons of civilians were admitted also ; and suitable in- 
struction was given to students intended for the peaceful 
profession of the Law. But the school rightly deserved 
the distinguishing epithet of Military, from the discipline by 
which it was characterised. 

The father of young Schiller had recently been pro- 
moted by the Grand Duke to the ofilce of Inspector 
and Layer-out of the grounds at " Solitude," and was 
subsequently raised to the rank of Major. But these 
benefits were not cheaply purchased. The Grand Duke in 
return desired to send Friedrich Schiller to his Military 
Seminary. This was tantamount to the rejection of the 
long-cherished scheme of the clerical profession. After 
much painful embarrassment, the elder Schiller frankly 
represented to his Prince the inclinations of himself and his 



200 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

son. The Grand Duke, however, repeated his request, 
proposed to leave to Friedrich the choice of his studies at 
the Academy, and promised him, when completed, an ap- 
pointment in the Royal Service. There was no resisting a 
petitioner, whose request was in reality a law, and from 
whose favour was derived the very bread of the family. 
Friedrich Schiller did not and could not hesitate to sacri- 
fice his own wishes to the interests of his parents. But 
this renunciation of his young hopes and the independence 
of his freewill, wounded alike his heart and his pride, 
•jhhq With grief and resentment equally keen, at the 
age of fourteen he entered the Academy as a 
student in Jurisprudence. The studies thus selected were, 
in themselves, sufficiently uncongenial ; but to the dulness 
of the Law Lecture was added the austerity of a corporal's 
drill. The youths were defiled in parade to lessons, in 
parade to meals, in parade to bed. At the word " March," 
they paced to breakfast — at the word " Halt," they arrested 
their steps — and at the word " Front," they dressed their 
ranks before the table.* In this miniature Sparta, the 
grand virtue to be instilled was subordination. Whoever 
has studied the character of Schiller, will allow that its 
leading passion was for Intellectual Liberty. Here mind 
and body were to be alike machines. Schiller's letters at 
this time to his friend Karl Moser, sufficiently show the 
fiery tumult and agitation of his mind ; — sometimes 
mournful — sometimes indignant — now sarcastic, now im- 
passioned — weary disgust and bitter indignation are seen 
through all. The German works, not included in the 
school routine, were as contraband articles- — the obstacles 
to obtain them only increased the desire : no barrier can 
ever interpose between genius and its affections. The love 
of Man to Woman is less irresistible than the love that 
binds Intellect to Knowledge. Schiller stole, the more 
ardently because secretly, to the embraces of his mistress 
— Poetry. Klopstock still charmed him, but newer and 
truer perceptions of the elements of Poetry came to him in 
the " Goetz von Berlichingen " of Goethe, with which, 
indeed, commenced the great Literary Revolution of 
Europe — by teaching to each nation that the true classical 

* Hoffmeister, Schwab, &c. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 201 

spirit for each, must be found in the genius of its own 
Romance. He who would really imitate Homer, must, 
in the chronicles of his native land, find out the Heroic 
Age. 

Schiller obeyed the impulse of his own frank and 
courageous mind in an attempt to regain his freedom. A 
strange custom at the Academy enjoined each pupil, once a 
year, to draw up and read aloud an analysis of his own 
character. Schiller seized the first opportunity -1774 
thus presented to him, to state that his character 
was not formed to excel in jurisprudence, but to serve God 
as a preacher. The confession failed to amend the voca- 
tion ; but finally he obtained permission to exchange Law 
for Medicine, — a class for which was superadded to the 
other academical instructions. The studies for this latter 
profession were no doubt more congenial to him than 
those of law, and served, indirectly and collaterally, to 
enrich the stores of a mind so inquisitive into the opera- 
tions of Nature. But the discipline in all studies was the 
same. Had they sought to cure him of Poetry, they would 
have had but to drill him into being a poet ! Meanwhile, 
he was fast fitting himself for the great destiny to which 
he was reserved. He devoured the writings of those who 
were his precursors in German Literature. Wieland's 
translation of Shakspeare fell into his hands. Nothing 
more strongly marks the peculiar earnestness of his cha- 
racter — the emphatic distinction between Shakspeare and 
himself — than the effect which he tells us, in one of his 
own compositions, the great Englishman produced on 
him : — "When at a very early age I first grew acquainted 
with this poet, I was indignant with his coldness — indig- 
nant with the insensibility which allowed him to jest and 
sport amidst the highest pathos. Led, by my knowledge 
with more modern poets, to seek the poet in his works ; to 
meet and sympathise with his heart ; to reflect with him 
over his object ; it was insufferable to me that this poet 
gave me nothing of himself. Many years had he my entire 
reverence — certainly my earnest study — before I could 
comprehend, as it were, his individuality. I was not yet 
fit to comprehend Nature at first hand ! " Nor indeed 
was Schiller ever able, as Shakspeare, thoroughly to 
separate himself from his creations. The peculiarities 



20£ THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

of Ms mind inclined him, if they did not limit, to the 
delineation of grave and elevated characters, and his heart, 
always in nnison with his mind, led him to incorporate 
himself with the beings he invoked ; bidding them be 
serious with his own intellect or ardent with his own 
emotions. 

His friends were few, but they were well selected, and 
they shared his inclinations, if they had not his genius, 
for literature. They formed a sort of intellectual fra- 
ternity. Each was to compose something, for which all 
dreamed of publication and fame — one a romance after 
"Werther;" one a pathetic drama; one a chivalrous 
imitation of " Goetz von Berlichingen ; " Schiller himself 
(fired by Grerstenberg's " Ugolino ") a tragedy, called 
" The Student of Nassau." This he abandoned afterwards 
for one of which he composed several scenes, and of which 
a part yet lives transferred to "The Robbers," viz., 
" Cosmo de Medicis." 

Meanwhile his poetical talent found its first (and the 

ihh/. h usual) vent in the corners of a periodical 
Magazine. At the age of sixteen and seven- 
teen appeared in the Suabian Magazine some small poems 
(very judiciously omitted from the collected editions of 
Schiller's works), in which the imitation of Klopstock is 
sufficiently visible. "0, then was I still," he exclaimed 
later, " but the slave of Klopstock ! " Nevertheless, the 
editor of the Magazine, Balthasar Haug, found promise in 
the midst of extravagance and bombast, and prophesied 
that the young poet " would one day do honour to his 
father-land." * 

The more his inclinations grew confirmed, the more sen- 
sibly he became alive to the formal tyranny by which they 
were opposed. No youth was less likely to be corrupted 
by Voltaire ; but bitter was his resentment at the disgrace 
he incurred, when discovered reading one of Voltaire's 
works. " Karl," he exclaims in his correspondence 
with young Moser, " so long as my spirit can raise itself to 
be free, it shall bow to no yoke ! " In fact, the Man's 
mind was ripened long before the Poet's geniuSr Crude, 
hard, laboured, and extravagant were Schiller's earliest 

* Schwab, Hoffmeister. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 203 

efforts ; but the soul from which Poetry springs as a well, 
clearing itself the more the farther it advances from its 
source ; a soul ever observant of beauty ; ever on the 
search for truth ; ever brave in difficulties ; ever fierce 
against restraint; thai was the same in its large elements, 
when the Boy, in vehement bombast, declaimed against the 
blood-stained laurels of a conqueror, as when the Main 
planted the robust step of Tell on the soil of Switzerland, 
and drew forth from the obloquy of ages the virgin glory 
of the Maid of Orleans. 

At last this long and terrible conflict between Genius 
and Circumstance became decisive. The cry of the 
strong man went forth. The Titan moved beneath the 
mountain ! 



CHAPTEE II. 

Brief review ot some portion of German literature immediately previous to 
the appearance of Schiller's " Robbers." 

It was precisely that time in Germany when an Author, 
whatever his defects, might hope for a favourable hearing, 
provided his genins carried onward the revolution that had 
already taken place in literature, and sympathised with 
that more dangerous movement which had begun to dis- 
turb society and agitate opinion. 

In literature, the old Gallomania, which for half a cen- 
tury had been vigorously opposed by sincere Poets and 
sturdy Critics,* had become almost extinct, except in the 
small royal circles where " Seigneur Oreste " and 
" Madame Hermione " still maintained their ground. The 
German genius had already arrogated a dynasty, and found 
in Klopstock an altar and a throne. What Klopstock t 
wrote is comparatively unimportant ; what Klopstock did 
is sublime. No matter that his "Messiah" was overrated, 
— that even his Odes are more tumid with cloud than in- 
stinct with fire. Rather a verbal musician than a poet,J 
his poetical imagination is doubtless frigid, and the weak- 
ness of his thoughts in vain disguises itself in redundant 
epithets and syllabic pomp. But he had two other imagi- 
nations besides the poetical, — the imagination of the heart, 
— the imagination of the conscience. He was an enthu- 
siast for his country and his religion. He felt like an 
honest man, and he wrote like a man in earnest. It has 
been truly observed, that, after Klopstock, " Germans 
were no longer ashamed to be German." If he was not 
absolutely the first to awaken the national spirit, he made 
it popular with the people, fashionable with the great, 
ardent in the young, solemn in the pious. There is not a. 

* Among critics, Bodmer and Breitinger ; among poets, von Haller and 
especially Gellert. 

f Born 1724. 

J One of the greatest of the German critics has observed that Klopstock' s 
odes, to be appreciated, should be accompanied with music — that he wrote, as 
il were, to tunes and airs. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 205 

German poet coining after Klopstock, who is not indebted 
to him ; indebted to him for a German audience — for that 
prevalent sentiment of patriotism and devotion in the 
Public without which the Poet sings to lay-figures, not to 
men. What was begun by Klopstock, was continued, 
with profounder views and on a grander scale by the illus- 
trious Lessing.* Well does Heine f exclaim, that 
" Lessing was the literary Arminius, who freed the 
German Theatre from every foreign domination. " Nor 
the Theatre alone — all German Art was embraced by the 
vast range of his criticism and the stalwart vigour of his 
genius. It is impossible to overrate the excellence of 
Lessing's intellectual nature, and the noble tendencies of 
his ambition. Though he modestly denied to himself the 
qualities of the Poet, and though some shallow depredators 
have echoed his own assertion, he enters even into prose with 
the majesty none but Poets can assume. In his "Emilia 
Galotti " domestic relations are elevated into the sublimest 
tragic passion. This drama is the German Virginius. No 
man has ever so happily effected the difficult union of 
heroic sentiment with modern manners. Greater even as 
a critic than a creator (and in the former character far 
more popularly renowned), he served both to place Art in 
its true sphere, and to enlarge its domain. Manliness was 
his characteristic in life and in tastes. Like Schiller, he 
loved to delineate Human Nature in its nobler qualities, 
and to sympathise with its graver ends, rather than, like 
Goethe, to dissect its infirmities, or,' like Wieland, to 
trifle with its interests; — the " Werther " of the first 
disgusted him — the "Agathon" of the last enraged. 
Lessing had the nationality of Klopstock without his pre- 
judice. If Klopstock were the first National Poet for the 
Public, Lessing was the great National Writer for the 
Writers. That a taste for German Poetry should exist, 
Klopstock was necessary. That Herder, Schiller, and 
even Goethe, should have been what they were, Lessing 
must have lived. 

But though the influence of Lessing was so pro- 
found, it was not of a nature to be widely popular, 

* Born 1729. 

f " Zur Geschichte der neuern schoenen Literatur in Deutsckland," 



206 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

nor to be clearly comprehended, save by its after- 
results : and his great career was now approaching to 
its close. He died in February, 1781, leaving a Public 
prepared for manly sentiments, for energetic purpose, 
for genial humanity, in those writers whom his mind had 
formed. 

At the period we enter (about 1780-1), Wieland* 
stood next to Klopstock in popular opinion. Amiable 
both in manners and in tastes, of mature years and esta- 
blished fame, if he was less decidedly national than 
Klopstock and Lessing, he was yet highly influential in the 
formation of the National Literature. He was also a First, 
an Originator — the first who taught the delicacies of Taste 
to German strength' — the first who taught the various 
imitators of the Gallic or Grecian Muse how, without 
imitating, to appropriate — the first in whom learning 
seemed airy as intuitive observation ; and in whom the 
fancy of a genuine poet, and the fluency of a charming 
novelist, were blended with the erudition of a scholar, and 
the elegance of a man who has known the world. Partly 
French, partly Greek — he is German through all ; a Ger- 
man who commenced his education at Paris, and finished 
it at Athens. We enter not into a discussion of the precise 
rank Wieland should assume, — a rank too readily conceded 
at one time, too harshly questioned now. But his influence 
limited itself to the fancy and the taste — it did not extend 
to opinions — it did not root itself in passions. His great 
defect was his want of earnestness and purpose. He may 
charm and he may refine ; but he does not brace the in- 
tellect to masculine exertion, nor elevate the imagination 
to lofty objects. At this time he sat on his careless throne 
at Weimar, rather to receive homage than to govern. But 
there were now already labouring into fame three young 
men ; two of whom, at least, were destined not only to 
wear the robes of sovereignty, but to wield the sceptre — 
Herder, Goethe, and Johann Heinrich Voss. 

The minds of these three men had been formed under 
the most powerful influence which a Frenchman had ever 
yet exercised in Germany. Always prone to imitate (as a 
learned people necessarily must be), the Germans had 

* Born 1733. 



THE LIFE OP SCHILLEK. 207 

escaped from the old Gallomania to fall into Grecomania 
and Anglomania — while one was imitating Theocritus, 
another was imitating Pope. The English Richardson, 
who, though less popular in Germany than Fielding, pro- 
duced a far more profound impression, as, indeed, that 
greater genius must do wherever the two can penetrate,* 
may be seen overshadowing the large mind of Lessing 
himself. The sublime Clarissa, whom Dishonour so noise- 
lessly slays, is the original of the no less sublime Emilia 
Galotti, who flies to Death from even a sentiment that dis- 
honours. But in vain Klopstock and Lessing had thrown 
from their pedestals Racine and Corneille — in vain Wieland 
had given to the Germans a more kindly, if a feebler 
Voltaire of their own — a new Gallomania had seized the 
heart, and fevered the brain of the People : " Greek and 
Briton, all gave way to the influence of Rousseau. Nothing 
is more interesting to one who seeks with Helvetius to 
trace the connection and sympathy between social in- 
fluences and literary tastes, than to contrast the nugatory 
effect produced in England, with the prodigious effect pro- 
duced in Germany by this unhealthy Genius. Though, at 
two great periods in the history of our Literature — that of 
Elizabeth and that of Anne — the Italian and the French 
writers have influenced our own, our more illustrious 
authors have rather reproduced than imitated ; and with 
the single exception of the Sterae-fever, the Literature of 
Sentiment has never been widely successful with our 
practical and busy population. But in Germany, always, 
as we have said, prone to imitate, no imitation was likely 
to be so contagious as that which combined sentiment with 
thought. The peculiar habits of life amongst the Germans 
— the absence for the most part of that active constitu- 
tional liberty which, when accompanied with commercial 

* The influence of Bichardson upon the fiction and poetry of Europe was 
not only vast at the time, but, enduring still, it must endure for ever. In 
vain his language grows obsolete, in vain his minuteness has become weari- 
some, in vain the young race of novel-readers leave him on the shelf— to 
those somewhat tedious pages turns every genius who aspires to rise in 
fiction ; from them, though with toil and study, can best be learned the art 
of extracting from the homeliest details the noblest pathos. In " Clarissa" 
is beheld that true spirit of tragedy which first dispensed with kings and 
heroes and the paraphernalia of the outward stage— teaching how the com- 
pass of all grandeur in fiction can be attained by him who can describe the 
affection, and comprehend the virtue, of one human being. 



208 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

pursuits, always tends, overmuch perhaps, to harden and 
materialise the national mind — do not present to domestic 
life the counterpoise which the life of the Mart and the 
Agora effects in England. Books which dispose the mind 
to abstract reverie or speculation, exercise a greater in- 
fluence over the Germans than they do over us ; a theory 
appears to them the more seductive in proportion as it is 
detached from the experience of practical life. Either 
wholly contented with the existing state of things, or 
wholly amidst the clouds of Utopia — they want that inter- 
mediate standard to which the mass of Englishmen un- 
consciously refer every suggestion of change or project of 
reform. The love of liberty, instinctive to all, and especially 
to nations at once so brave and so lettered as the German, 
finds that vent in the ideal from which it is precluded by 
the actual. Hence, while practical liberty amongst the 
Germans is so confined when compared with ours,'" their 
theoretical liberty — liberty of thought, opinion, and specu- 
lation — is infinitely greater. The most religious German 
will start inquiries which an irreligious Englishman would 
be afraid to suggest : And the Politician who would shrink 
from arguing for a Representative Constitution, will 
luxuriate in the dreams of Republican Fraternity. Pre- 
cisely the reasons that deadened the influence of Rousseau 
in England, gave it vitality in Germany, viz., impracti- 
cability in politics, and morbidity in romance. Our own 
active life, that rude, common sense which is acquired 
with our mother's milk, amidst our world-awake population, 
would teach even an ordinary Englishman the untruth that 
forms the ground-work of " The Social Contract," and 
shock our sense of nature in the eloquence of St. Preux. 
We know, without reasoning about it, that no Social Con- 
tract ever existed, and that no lover, worthy the name, 
could sit down to make an inventory of furniture five 
minutes before his first assignation with the woman he 
professes to adore. But with the Germans the novelty of 
the political theory concealed its falsehood ; the sentiment 
of the fiction concealed its want of nature. There was 
much in Rousseau that could not fail to charm and to 
dazzle the German mind, which, from its own deficient 

* The reader will remember that this was written in 1847. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 209 

experience of agitated and various life, perceived not Lis 
ignorance or perversion of nature in character and passion. 
The Germans could fully comprehend his love and his 
knowledge of inanimate nature; his enjoyment of scenery; 
his passion for solitude ; his power of associating the land- 
scape around with emotions within. Their own fondness 
for domestic and rural life made them charmed with the 
primitive simplicity which he held up to admiration. The 
vast mass of disappointed ambition, which amongst an in- 
tellectual population, without he multiform vents of a free 
constitution, must necessarily be engendered, found a voice 
and a sickly comfort in Rousseau's disgust of the active 
world. The ardour for liberty — the revolutionary spirit, 
awakened in Germany as in France — obtained in the 
Dreamer of Geneva a representative nearly akin to the 
amiable and tender character of the Germans. The biting 
mockery of Voltaire might delight a court and charm a 
scholar ; but the earnest and pious heart of the multitude 
recoiled from a spirit that desecrated what it attacked, to 
open itself with dangerous emotion to a spirit that sought 
to sanctify what it embraced. The laughing philosopher 
never makes disciples so devoted as the weeping one. 
With Rousseau rose the great sect of humanity; the 
school which seeks to lift human nature above convention ; 
which would extract from social life all that is harsh and 
tyrannous ; and (to use the phrase of Seneca) recognise a 
claim to kindness wherever it looks upon the face of man. 
Upon Herder, Goethe, and Voss, the influence of Rous- 
seau produced effects, perhaps equally strong, but widely 
differing in their nature. Herder * rejected all that in the 
Genevese was effeminate and egotistical, to seize upon all 
that was genial and philanthropic. In him arose the true 
Preacher of Humanity : with Rousseau Humanity was a 
sentiment ; with Herder it became a science. Of a mind 
thoroughly sound and healthy — of a cultivation vast and 
various — of a broad common sense which gave life and 
substance to the boldest speculations, Herder snatched from 
the weak hands of the French Socialists the great cause 
which they profaned — viz. the Principle of Human Pro- 
gress, recognised it through History, illustrated it through 
Poetry, and reconciled it to Religion as the law of God. 
* Born 1744. 



210 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

For Herder the noblest destinies were reserved. By pro- 
fession a preacher — by energy a citizen — by genins a poet 
— by piety and wisdom a philosopher and cosmopolite — all 
that is intellectual in man may be said to have flowered in 
him. With a great inclination towards what is practical 
in life, which he sometimes regretted he had not more 
diligently studied in its minutiae, he combined an innocence 
of heart in which lay half his strength. " My whole life," 
he said once, " is the interpretation of the oracles of my 
childhood." He loved to glean thoughts from the con- 
jectures of childhood — from the wonder of ignorance. 
Hence he saw in the infancy and youth of nations the 
beauty and the promise which historians have overlooked. 
Thus he was the first who gave to Poetry its proper place 
in the grave and solemn dispensations of the world : — re- 
garding it as the absolute voice that spoke the time and 
character of a race, he brought into one vast compendium, 
entitled " The Voices of the Nations," the popular songs of 
all countries. Amongst the many influences he lived to 
effect upon his age, is the impetus he gave to that tendency 
in the German genius, which is called " Universalism." 
For, as Humanity to Politics, Charity to Virtue, Chris- 
tianity to Man, so is Universalism to Letters. * That 
separation between the faculties — that division of mental 
labour so general elsewliere — in Germany was broken 
down. The Poet studied Philosophy — the Philosopher 
Poetry. But most of what Herder lived to effect, was as 
yet unfulfilled. He was already known as a scholar, an 
essayist, a victorious prizeman, an eloquent preacher — and 
in high station and repute at the Court of Weimar. But 
still he stood somewhat apart from the popular literature 
of the time ; and had rather served to indicate the great 

* Herder is a very voluminous writer, but the epitome of his mind and his 
views is to he found in his work on the " Philosophy of the History of Man- 
kind." The work is not without grave faults. It is often incorrect in 
detail; it too much follows Helvetius in founding authority on the imper- 
fect accounts of travellers and voyagers ; it is often displeasingly declama- 
tory in its tone. But its power of generalisation is astonishing. It seizes, 
as with the grasp of a giant, the immensity of the subject it embraces. Few 
works deserve so justly the epithets of luminous and comprehensive. 
Headers well acquainted with this work will find many of its ideas, even 
some of its images, borrowed by Schiller in his later poems, though it 
would seem unconsciously. Schiller never appears to have been aware of 
his great obligations to Herder. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 211 

change destined to take place in public taste and feeling, 
than to dispirit, by his own renown, the ambition of 
another. 

While Rousseau had thus influenced Herder only to 
grand results ; the primitive simplicity, the pastoral family 
life which Rousseau had held up to admiration amongst 
the homely Germans, had sunk deep into the mind of a 
rude young Saxon — Johann Heinrich Voss,* not worthy, 
indeed, from his mere genius, to be named in the same 
breath with Herder and Goethe, but still, for many reasons, 
not meriting the depreciation of Schlegel, and the disdain of 
Menzel. Low-born, self-educated, a rigid Protestant sec- 
tarian, driven for bread to the drudgery of a schoolmaster, 
Voss is often vulgar in his taste, pedantic in his composi- 
tions, prejudiced and intolerant in his polemics. But 
withal, he is a true German, and a strong man. His ser- 
vices to his language were immense. He enriched it with 
the wealth of the foreigner; he strengthened it with the 
cultivation of its own natural resources ; he revived the 
old words of Luther on the lips of Homer. It is well said 
of Voss that his strength is in his war with obstacles. He 
hewed his way through poverty into learning ; and he cut 
through rough crags f of diction, till he found out a 
fount of poetry all his own. But, as yet, Voss was young, 
— if not obscure, at least but partially known, — and had 
neither obtained, by harsh and ungrateful controversy, the 
title of the second Luther, nor given in his " Louise" and 
his "Idyls" (poems most popular in their time, and 
thoroughly repugnant to English taste) the pastoral of a 
Curate's Parlour, and the model to Goethe's " Herman and 
Dorothea." First, then, already in popular eminence, of 
the three we have named — first, indeed, of all the younger 
and rising generation, stood "Wolfgang Goethe, j Xor had 
lie then escaped, perhaps he never altogether escaped, from 
the influence of Rousseau. In fact, it is the merit of this 
wonderful man, that *his whole nature was especially 
plastic and impressionable. Every influence of his time 
stamped itself on his intellect, to be reproduced in new 
forms by his genius. Does the age incline to sentiment ? 

* Bom 17-51, two years after Goethe. 
f " Versified marble blocks." — Seine. 
% Born 1749, five years after Herder. 

r 2 



212 THE LIFE OF SCHILLEK. 

he sounds its abysses : — To irony ? the sneer of Voltaire 
seems venomless "beside the icy smile of the fiend he calls 
from hell, to mock at human knowledge, and desecrate 
human love ! Does the age yearn for Pastorals and family 
life ? he turns from courts and the seventh heaven of 
Poetry to borrow from homely Voss ; and ruins him by 
the riches he extracts from the loan. In his " Werther " he 
concentrates the history of an epoch in his country, — the 
epoch of the Rousseau Mania. But though the " Nouvelle 
Heloise " is incontestably the origin of " Werther," those 5 * 
who regard it as a mere copy do it miserable injustice. 
There is more rhetorical eloquence in one page of the 
" Nouvelle Heloise" than in the whole of " Werther" — but 
there is more nature in one page of " Werther" than in the 
whole of the " Nouvelle Heloise" In this, the warmest and 
most actual of all Goethe's novels — if once overrated, now 
so unjustly depreciated, which he did right to regret for 
its moral, which he did wrong to disparage as a proof of 
his genius — lies the germ of much that, in fiction, its 
author's riper intellect matured. Here we see that associa- 
tion of homeliness and grandeur which his enemies have 
called " the Adornment of Commonplace.' ' What English- 
man, with his fastidious classical taste, has not ridiculed 
the contrast of the Hero in the clouds, and the Heroine 
cutting bread and butter — of the solemnity of deliberate 
suicide, and the exact description of the top-boots and blue 
coat in which the unhappy man rushed to the dread Un- 
known ? But considered by a higher art than we learn at 
college, it is this very homeliness of detail that gives truth 
to the romance. And this peculiarity Goethe continued, 
as he advanced in his luminous career, to invest with an 
unspeakable beauty. It is, in truth, to a very early study 
of what, while subtlest in the essence, is simplest in the 
form, that Goethe owes the lucid ease of his after style, 
and the popularity he secured to flights of imagination 
which, in a less artful writer, would have left the multitude 
far behind. Here, too, we see a yet more distinguishing 
attribute of Goethe, to which we have before alluded — viz. 
the inclination to describe, not so much the healthful 
nobleness, as the diseased infirmity, of an intellectual 

* Such as Menzel. 



THE LIFE OP SCHILLER. 213 

character. What he here does in " Werther," he did after- 
wards in " Clavigo," in the " Elective Affinities,' , in "Faust," 
and in " Tasso." Menzel, who, whatever may be thought of 
his injustice to Goethe, demands the greatest respect for 
his honest passion for what is sincere and noble — for his 
vigorous sense — for his daring courage — falls into a cant 
unworthy of so great a critic, when he accuses Goethe of 
confounding vice and virtue, by depicting weak or dis- 
honourable characters as interesting and amiable. It is 
among the most legitimate, and among the highest pro- 
vinces of the Poet, to depict those contrasts which subject 
him to this charge — to show a vice in the virtuous, and a 
virtue in the wicked ; and this unquestionable truth in art 
once granted, it follows as the very condition of fiction, 
that to a hero thus selected, human interest must be given. 
You cannot blame a Poet for making a faulty hero interest- 
ing, unless you contend that heroes of fiction must be 
perfect * — by which dogma you would at once cut off from 
the Poet the whole realm of the human heart, and separate 
his ethics from the representation of Truth and Nature. 
This love, indeed, of probing the sores of character — of 
representing the infirmities of intellectual man — was not 
more remarkable in Goethe than in Shakspeare ; who, in 
the whole range of his Dramas, has never presented to us 
a single male image of perfect virtue ; who, in Macbeth, in 
Othello, in Angelo, in Shylook, in Hamlet (the last is so 
Goethe-like, that if Shakspeare had never created it one 
might predict that Goethe would have done so), lays bare, 
with fearful precision, the weakness of the wise — the 
crime of the virtuous. It is in vain to deny that our 
paramount interest in all these plays is with the erring, or 
the infirm. But who shall say that Shakspeare, while 
interesting us in the hero, sought to pervert our conscience 
into admiring the defect : that it was his object to deco- 
rate ambitious murder, or jealous ferocity ; licentious 
hypocrisy, or implacable revenge ; or to womanize the 
intellect, and emasculate the will, by all the doubts and 
scruples which make up the philosophy of Hamlet? — 
Hamlet, that great fountain-head of modern sentiment — 

* Or unless you contend, that if a hero is faulty, the author must not make 
him interesting ; but whatever an author does, he must give it interest. 
IS o author is obliged to be dull. 



214 THE LIFE OF SCH1LLEE. 

from -which have gushed a thousand rivulets of melancholy 
and scepticism ; Hamlet, that perpetual mirror to minds 
fluctuating between the Visible and the Unseen, the Actual 
and the Ideal, the stern demands of uncomprehended 
duty, and the desire to escape from practical action into 
visionary self- commune ; Hamlet, in whom is shown the 
mysterious prototype of what man would be with virtue, 
and with wisdom, but without Will ! 

But though Goethe does not seem to us to be blamed for 
following the tendency of his genius, into directions in 
which the peculiar delicacy and subtlety of his intellect 
ensured him such success ; and though, a hundred years 
hence, we believe that what Menzel and other depredators 
consider immoral, will not mislead a single imitator, or 
corrupt a single youth ; yet it must be conceded that the 
direct object of his works was not to make Man more 
manly, and his desires more elevated. We say the direct 
object ; for indirectly, and sooner or later, whatever makes 
man wiser, — nerves his mind, and purifies his emotions ; 
and there may be truth in the theory, that Art is to be 
cultivated as Art; that the Beautiful must reflect in- 
differently on its tranquil mirror whatever Convention 
deems moral or immoral : For, to whatever is really and 
essentially vicious, the Beautiful itself is opposed; — Con- 
vention revolts at the exhibition of the naked form, but 
foul must be the imagination that finds immorality in the 
Venus of the sculptor. 

At this date, however, Goethe was still scarcely out of 
his apprenticeship. His greatest works had not been pro- 
duced. On his " Goetz von Berlicllingen,' , his " Werther," 
and his " Clavigo," rested the principal columns of the 
renown he had acquired. These, indeed, had unsettled the 
public taste, and prepared it for bold innovations ; but 
Goethe had not, like our Byron in a later day, engrossed 
the general interest in himself, and become the sole repre- 
sentative of a common sentiment. In that crisis of 
opinion and of passion preceding the outbreak of the 
French Revolution, and contemporaneous with the rise of 
daring speculators and profound inquirers, men required 
something more than the childlike pietism of Klopstock, 
the airy elegance of Wieland, or that philosophy of senti- 
ment — that analysis of man's weakness, so apart from 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 215 

sympathy with men's interests, which Goethe had exhibited 
in "Werther " and " Clavigo." Something indeed was want- 
ing still ; something, it is true, which in order to be 
popular mnst necessarily partake of the morbid craving, 
the unsettled spirit, the revolutionary tendency of the 
time, but which, in order to outlast the hour, must also 
develop into fuller force, and diffuse through a wider 
public whatever in Lessing had been earnest, whatever in 
Herder promised to be humane. There was a great multi- 
tude which as yet in Germany had f onnd no voice ; which 
desired to hear its own discontented heart beat in the pulse 
of some passionate Anthor, indignant with what was false, 
and sympathising with what was free. Never, in Ger- 
many, had there been a time more favourable to a writer 
(no matter what his other defects) who, shouldering aside 
courts and schoolmen, should address himself manfully 
to men. 



CHAPTER III. 

The publication of " The Robbers " — Schiller's life at Stuttgart — His love 
for Laura — and poems in the Anthology — " The Robbers " — Brought out 
on the stage — Schiller's arrest — Fears, and determination to escape from 
Wiirtemberg. 

At this time there was published at Mannheim a strange, 
rugged, fiery melodrame, in which, amidst uncouth masses 
of extravagant diction, — flashed a spirit true to all the 
turbulent and unsettled philosophy of the hour — and 
which seemed destined to announce and to animate the 
revolution of a world : — " The Robbers " appeared, and the 
sensation it excited spread through the mind of Germany 
like fire through flax ; — nor through Germany alone — it 
produced in France the liveliest enthusiasm ; it even stirred 
to its depths the calm intellect of England. It was, in 
fact, the most earnest Revolutionary fiction that had yet 
revealed what lay hid in the History of the Age. — What 
the irruption of the old Germans was in the midst of the 
smooth and decrepit civilisation of Rome, — was the burst 
of this new German amidst the hollow conventions which 
under the ancien regime less guarded the life of Virtue 
than entombed her corpse. 

"The Robbers " is one sweeping uncompromising defiance 
of the sober proprieties in which the mature see decorum 
and the young dissimulation. It is the baseness of the 
World that makes Karl Moor a criminal. It is in propor- 
tion to his exaggerated nobleness that he is unfitted for 
Society. It is because he is a giant that he cannot live 
amongst the dwarfs. He commences life with many 
virtues, and it is the mediocrity of life that turns every 
virtue into sin. It is his sympathy with poverty and 
suffering, with the virtuous and oppressed that has 
banished the Demigod to the rock — and afflicted hiui with 
the ever-gnawing vulture. 

That a work like this, so conceived, and executed with 
all the power which can whirl along the passions of the 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 217 

crowd, must have produced a great deal of mischief at 
the time, may be readily allowed. No man can disturb 
the settled course of opinion, right or w r rong, without 
doing evil as well as good. — Whether Genius innovates in 
a poem, or Science in a manufacture, some minds in the 
one case must be thrown into disorder, some hands in the 
other thrown out of employ. But Genius and Science 
must still obey the great instincts of their being — the one 
still innovate, the other still invent. In th.e moral consti- 
tution of nature, they are the great alterative, the " Sturm- 
Bad," which first fevers and convulses, then purifies and 
strengthens. But nothing could be farther from the mind 
of the Boy from whose unpractised hand came this rough 
Titan sketch, than to unsettle virtue, in his delineations of 
crime. Virtue was then, as it continued to the last, his 
Ideal — and if at the first he shook the statue on its 
pedestal, it was but from the rudeness of the caress that 
sought to warm it into life.* 

The original sketch of this drama Schiller had com- 
pleted two years before the publication. But he kept it by 
him till he had completed his medical studies, towards the 
end of 1780, and been appointed by the Duke to the office 
of Surgeon to a regiment. He then considered himself 
a free agent, and after searching in vain for -. -q-. 

a bookseller to hazard the necessary ex- -^, , A. 7 
penses, he published " The Robbers " at his 
own cost. 

If the popularity of the work was dazzling, the aversion 
it excited in some was as intense as the admiration it 
called forth in others. But the most formidable critic was 
the Grand Duke himself. This uncouth drama displeased 
his taste no less than it revolted his opinions. He sent for 
the author, and bade him in future eschew poetry, and 
stick to medicine ; or, if he needs must write, submit 
his productions to the revision of his Prince. It 
is easy to sneer at the conduct of the man of power 

* Goctlie himself has somewhere said that the most universal effect of the 
highest Genius is to unsettle; and certainly it has ever been so where its 
effect upon its age could be traced — witness Cervantes, Bacon, Luther, 
Milton (especially in his prose works). Shakspeare, not studied in his own 
time, has influenced, by unsettling, the literary mind of three Nations at the 
least : in our own day, Bp'on and Wordsworth are, in their several ways, 
equal Innovators. 



218 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

to tlie man of genius ; bat the Grand Duke was 
scareely to blame, for there are few individuals now-a-days 
whose taste " The Robbers " will not offend, and we may 
judge of the abhorrence it excited at that time in others, 
besides the Grand Duke, by the words addressed by an 
illustrious personage to Goethe, "If I were a Grod, and 
deliberating whether I should create the world, and fore- 
saw that in that world Schiller's " Robbers " would appear, 
I would not create it." Meanwhile, however, the young 
Poet had commenced a correspondence with the Freiherr 
von Dalberg, a nobleman intrusted with the superintend- 
ence of the Theatre at Mannheim, and the play was to be 
j • . remodelled for the stage. Simultaneously 

1 hoq appeared many lyrics and minor poems of the 

author, contributions to a miscellany entitled 
" The Anthology," and set up in concert with some of his 
friends. A large portion of these performances, charac- 
terised, it is true, by power, though distorted, and origi- 
nality, though uncouth, still belonged to a very inferior and 
coarse school of poetry, known in Germany by the signifi- 
cant title of the " Storm and Stress " * — a school of which 
some notion may be gleaned by those who turn to that 
later era in our own literature, when the servile herd of 
imitators mixed up, on their staring canvas, the sepia of 
Matthew Lewis with the gamboge and vermilion of Lord 
Byron. Most of these Schiller rejected from the collected 
edition of his works ; some of those retained have been 
wisely corrected and compressed. Such as they were, 
however, they added to the sudden celebrity of the writer. 
And now, while Germany began to ring with the name of 
the young Poet, what was his life ? He lodged in a small 
apartment, which he shared with a young officer named 
Kapff, who had quitted the academy at the same time. 
Kapff is said to have been of dissolute habits, f and to 
have occasionally misled his wild and impetuous companion 
into some irregularities ; favoured the more by the general 
licence of a town to which the earlier example of the 

* The German phrase is thus happily translated by Mr. Carlyle, in one of 
his "Miscellaneous Writings." 

f Schwab — who rests this assertion against Kapff upon imprinted, and, 
therefore, very suspicious testimony. Probably poor Kapff lived like most 
young soldiers, neither worse nor better. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 219 

reigning Duke had given a tone of manners the reverse of 
austere.* Still such irregularities never degenerated into 
habit, and were counteracted in their effects upon the mind 
by Schiller's frequent visits to his excellent family, the 
tender warnings of his mother, the fortunate narrowness 
of his finances^ the professional demands upon his time, 
and that passion for literature, with which systematic in- 
dulgence in dissipation and disorder is, it is true, not 
always incompatible, but to which it is certainly opposed. 
Above all. perhaps, we must be permitted to believe that 
the young Poet was saved from more vagrant and un- 
worthy excesses, by that great purifier of youth — First 
Love. In the same house lodged the widow of a captain, 
who appears, by all probable accounts, to have been the 
original of the " Laura," to whom the most impassioned 
of all his love-verses are addressed. A humorous, but 
somewhat flippant, friend of Schiller's — Scharffenstein — 
lias described this lady in the same spirit of caricature 
with which he has treated of the noble image of Schiller 
himself. He says, " she was not pretty, nor clever ; but 
had something about her, good-natured, piqtwmt, and 
attractive.' ' One of Schiller's biographers hints at un- 
published accounts, less flattering ; but what is unpublished 
is necessarily unsifted and unsupported ; and we have no 
evidence whatsoever to invalidate that on which the Poet 
himself commands our interest for one who could make so 
vivid an impression on his heart. Schiller was, no doubt, 
a,t least as good a judge of beauty and of cleverness as his 
friend Scharffenstein. 

It would be impossible for a critic of common sense to 
suppose, with certain metaphysical commentators, that this 
love was merely Platonic. Platonic love in Schiller ! As 
well talk of Platonic love in Burns ! The poerus them- 
selves, in their very faults, bear internal evidence of the 
healthful and natural passion of the man, which takes 
poetry for its vent — not the vanity of the poetaster who 
would simulate the great passion of man, in order to obtain 
a vent for his verses. 

But whatever this affection, it seems to have burned 
out from its very fierceness, and (though, years after- 
wards, the Poet speaks of the resignation of Laura as 
* HofFineister. f Madame von "Wolzogen. 



220 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

the great sacrifice of youth), it was obviously very 
different from that steady, pure, and permanent at- 
tachment which ultimately made the happiness of his 
manhood. 

At last, on the 13th of January, 1782, " The Robbers " 
appeared on the stage at Mannheim, The sensation the 
printed play had produced served to crowd the theatre. 
Near and far, from Heidelberg and Darmstadt, from Prank- 
fort, Mayence, and Worms, gathered the audience. The 
play lasted five hours. The success in print was trivial to 
that upon the stage. The fiery rebellion of thought which 
it embodied became more startling when animated by the 
art of the greatest actors of the time,* and hailed by the 
enthusiasm of spectators, in whom, as everywhere in 1782, 
the spirit of Revolution was astir. 

We can easily imagine the impatient desire of Schiller 
to witness his own triumph. He went by stealth to Mann- 
heim. In an obscure corner of the crowded house, the 
author beheld the living embodiment of his own thoughts 
and passions. He saw himself raised at once into that 
mighty power — the mover of the hearts of men. He re- 
turned to Stuttgart confirmed for life in the vocation his 
1 hn j genius had adopted. " If Germany/' he wrote 

-, hno ' to Dalberg on his return, " shall one day recog- 
nise in me a Dramatic Poet, I must date the 
epoch from the last week. ,, 

But in proportion to the ardour of his inclinations, was 
the restraint of Schiller's actual life. At Mannheim, he 
was the freeman, the poet ; he returned to Stuttgart to 
sink again into the subaltern and the subject. Some ex- 
pressions in the third act of the " The Robbers," reflecting 
upon the national character of the Grisons, gave such 
offence to the objects of the rude and boyish satire, that 
their complaint was published in " The Hamburgh Corre- 

* B6k acted Karl Moor with prodigious effect : but that is a part which 
almost plays itself. Iffland, a man of real genius, elevated the disagreeable 
character of Franz Moor into the dignity of an Iago. His representation of 
this part seems to have been one of th6 most perfect as well as one of the 
most popular triumphs of the stage. His thin figure and meagre countenance, 
suiting well with the ideal of a formal hypocrite, served to increase the 
actuality of the personation. Inland, like Schiller, was commencing his 
career ; he was then about six-and-twenty, according to Schiller's bio- 
graphers ; three-and-twenty according to other authorities, who state his 
birth to have been in April, 1759. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 221 

spondent," and, by the mediation of a man named Walter, 
who bore some personal grndge to Schiller, laid before the 
Grand Duke. The result seems to have been a very 
severe reprimand on the part of the Duke, and a peremp- 
tory injunction to Schiller to confine his studies to Medi- 
cine — his publications to such as befitted his profession — 
to abandon all connexion with States under other jurisdic- 
tion (meaning Mannheim), limiting his ambition to his 
calling, and his connexions to his country.* Such a 
command could not be obeyed by a man urged to resist by 
the stronger despotism of his own genius. Already new 
and vast designs were opening to Schiller's intellectual 
ambition ; already he had commenced and proceeded far 
in the tragedy of " Fiesco ; " already meditated a drama on 
the fate of Don Carlos of Spain. To ask him to renounce 
these projects was to ask him to renounce the very mind 
by wmich they were formed. His first visit to the Mann- 
heim theatre had been undetected or overlooked ; he went 
again in the following May, and was put for fourteen days 
under arrest. Dangers now beset him ; dark and sinister 
menaces were repeated to him by officious friends, and 
exaggerated perhaps in their import by the gloom of his 
imagination. But the dangers in themselves were real 
and imminent. Before his eyes was the fate of the Poet 
Schubart,f eight years imprisoned for displeasing the 
jealousies of Power. What fate could seem more terrible 
to one drunk with the desire of liberty, and eager to spread 
the wings of his genius ? Stuttgart, nay, all Suabian 
scenes, as he himself complains, in a letter to Dalberg, 
" became intolerable and loathed." He could have had 
but small comfort from his family. His father as yet 
regarded his notoriety with dislike and fear. He was not 
a prophet in his own country, nor an honour to his own 
hearth ; — with disgust he saw all around him ; — with san- 
guine self-confidence he cast his eyes beyond. He formed 
the only resolution natural to his circumstances and worthy 
of his independence : he resolved to emancipate body and 
soul both ; to fly from Stuttgart, and throw himself on the 
world. 

* Schwab, &c. 

f An Appendix to Mr. Carlyle's " Life of Schiller " contains an interesting 
account of this unfortunate poet. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

Flight from Stuttgart — " Fiesco " read to the actors — Adventures and 
wanderings — Schiller finds refuge at Bauerbach — Commencement of 
" Cabal and Love." 

Amongst Schiller's companions was a warmhearted 

-t nno enthusiastic musician, two years younger than 
himself, named Andrew Streicher. This youth 
became his confidant. Together they brooded over the 
future — together they conceived and nursed the project of 
escape. It had been intended that Streicher should pro- 
ceed to Hamburgh in the spring of the next year, to take 
lessons in his art from the celebrated Bach.* He per- 
suaded his mother to consent that the date of this journey 
should be advanced, and the friends settled that Schiller 
should bear him company. But Schiller, with all his inex- 
perience, and all his fiery ardour, had that strong sense 
with which true genius prepares for the fulfilment, even of 
its wildest schemes. He felt the necessity of providing, 
from his own talents, the materials for their support. He 
would not leave Stuttgart till his tragedy of " Fiesco " was 
nearly completed. In that tragedy lay his fortune and his 
future. He worked at it night and day — illness seized 
him, but the work went on. At length it was suffi- 
ciently advanced for presentation to the Mannheim 
Theatre, and the opportunity now offered itself for 
escape. 

The city and its neighbourhood were astir with the visit 
of the Grand Duke Paul of Russia, and his young Princess, 
niece to the Duke of Wtirtemberg. In the midst of these 
festivities the flight was planned. 

It was obviously necessary to conceal from the elder 
Schiller the designs of the son ; the military notions and 
military duty of the former might not only lead him to 
forbid, but to disclose them. And the young Poet was 

* Not the great Sebastian Bach, who died in 1750. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLEE. 223 

moreover anxious, that whatever the displeasure of his 
sovereign, it might fall on himself alone — not involve his 
father. But his eldest and favourite sister was admitted 
to his confidence; — the little girl who had wandered with 
the dreaming hoy through the ruins of Hohenstaufen, and 
amidst the pines of Larch, was become a woman, capable 
of sympathising with the lofty hopes of the adventurous 
man : and at last, a day or two before the meditated de- 
parture, the truth was broken to Schiller's mother. With 
his friend Streicher, and the wife of the Stage Manager at 
Mannheim, Madame Meier (whom, as well as the Director 
Dalberg, the royal festivities had drawn to Stuttgart, but 
from whom the secret was carefully kept), Schiller for the 
last time visited his family at " Solitude." He took the 
opportunity, which his father's absorption in his own 
account of the royal preparations afforded, to steal with his 
mother unobserved from the room. After an hour's absence, 
he returned — alone. The affectionate gaze of Streicher saw 
what he had suffered in that parting interview, by the 
redness of his eyes. The important day was now fixed — 
the 17th of September. 

Streicher removed from Schiller's lodging a bundle, 
containing the dress which was to be substituted for 
the uniform of the Regimental Surgeon — some linen, 
and a few books — among which were the works of 
Haller and Shakspeare. But when Streicher came to 
fetch Schiller himself — after the return of the latter from 
his final visit to the Hospital — he found the young enthu- 
siast with Klopstock's Odes in his hands. A favourite 
ode had given unseasonable inspiration to his own muse, 
and the impatient musician was forced to wait and hear, 
not only the seductive ode, but the ode it had called forth. 
At last all was ready — day passed — night came — Schiller 
had assumed his disguise ; three-and-twenty florins consti- 
tuted the Poet's wealth, eight-and-twenty the Musician's; 
two trunks, containing books and apparel — a brace of 
pistols — and a small clavichord, summed up the effects 
of the fugitives. At ten o'clock the vehicle which con- 
tained the adventurers rolled from Streicher's lodging 
to the Esslingen Gate (the darkest of all the City 
Gates), at which the Lieutenant of the Watch was a 
firm friend of the Poet's. "Halt ! who goes there?" 



224 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

" Dr. Ritter and Dr. Wolf, both bound to Esslingen." 
" Pass." 

The escape is made. Towards midnight they beheld, at 
the left, the illuminated Ludwigsburg, like a mount of 
fire ; further on, and at the distance of a mile from their 
road, they saw the castle of " Solitude,' ' and the neigh- 
bouring buildings, lighted up in honour of the Royal 
visitor. In the clear air, all was so distinctly visible, that 
the poet could point out to his companion his parents' 
home; and a suppressed sigh — a soft " O meine Mutter " — 
escaped him ! So fled from the capital of Wtirtemberg, 
Friedrich Schiller, " empty " — as, with little exaggeration, 
he himself has said, " of purse and hope ; " esteemed as a 
rebel by his Sovereign ; condemned as a scapegrace by his 
father ; regarded but as an imprudent reckless scribbler, 
marring his own fair prospects for a vain ambition, by his 
associates ! — He who now visits that capital finds little to 
arrest his interest — except one colossal statue, in a broad 
space near the Royal palace ; before which his guide will 
bid him halt to contemplate Friedrich Schiller — the pride 
of his Fatherland ! 

The travellers reached Mannheim in safety. They 
unpacked their boxes, and put on their best clothes ; 
it was a holiday — they were out of the Grand Duke's 
dominions — they were free ! Schiller's hope was in his 
"Fiesco." In a few sheets of paper lay all that was to 
give bread to existence, independence to labour, and glory 
to ambition. Dalberg was at Stuttgart ; but Meier, the 
manager, received them with kindness. When he heard, 
with astonishment, the bold step Schiller had taken, he 
urged the expediency of an immediate letter to the Grand 
Duke. This, indeed, Schiller had already resolved upon. 
In the small German States, the relation between prince 
and subject is more parental and patriarchal than in the 
larger Monarchies of Europe : if the prince be more de- 
spotic, the subject can be more familiar. After dinner, to 
which the young friends were invited by Meier, Schiller 
withdrew into another apartment, and wrote frankly to his 
Sovereign ; it was a letter at once manly and respectful. 
He represented how impossible he found it to live upon his 
professional gains as a surgeon ; — his income could only be 
made sufficient by his literary labours. He prayed for 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 225 

permission to try Lis fortune for a short time out of 
the Duke's dominions, and declared his willingness ulti- 
mately to return on receiving his Sovereign's pardon. 
The letter was enclosed to the chief of Schiller's regi- 
ment, General Auge, with a petition to present, and 
to support it. The next day Madame Meier returned 
from Stuttgart, with the news that Schiller's flight was 
already notorious; and that it was expected that the 
Grand Duke would demand the delivery of his person. 
As Schiller, however, was not a soldier, he could not 
be treated and reclaimed as a deserter ; still it was 
deemed advisable that he should not show himself till 
the Grand Duke's answer was received. A letter from 
General Auge came at last ; it preserved perfect silence 
as to the request Schiller had preferred, and only an- 
nounced to him the permission, or implied the order, 
immediately to return. Schiller hastened to reply to 
the General, that he could not regard the Grand Duke's 
message as a compliance with his request, which he again 
respectfully urged. A second letter from the General 
laconically repeated the purport of the former one. 
Schiller's pride, his spirit of independence, and his honour 
became engaged. He could not recall the step which had 
delivered him from an intolerable bondage : the die was 
cast, and he resolved, as he himself has expressed it, " to 
exchange the citizenship of his country for that of the 
world." 

Meanwhile Streicher had fired the manager with his 
accounts of " Fiesco ; " a day and hour were fixed for 
Schiller to read his new performance to the more distin- 
guished actors, among whom was Iffland. The young poet 
commenced his reading, — all listened in silence, — not a 
word of approbation. At the end of the first act some 
slipped away ; at the end of the second, the disappoint- 
ment grew more unequivocal ; and a quarter of an hour 
afterwards, the poet had lost all his listeners except Iffland. 
Meier now took aside Streicher, and asked him seriously, 
" if Schiller really were the author of ' The Robbers ' ? " — 
li Certainly," said the astonished friend. " Then," answered 
Meier, "he has exhausted his strength in his first per- 
formance." But the manuscript was left with the expe- 
rienced manager, and the next morning, when fcJtreicher 

Q 



226 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

repaired, full of painfnl anxiety, to Meier, he was accosted 
with " You are right, ' Fiesco ? is a masterpiece ! — better 
fitted for the stage than ' The Robbers.' " It was 
Schiller's Suabian dialect, and his high-pitched mono- 
tonous mode of declamation, that had done such in- 
justice to his genius — a perusal of the play excited Meier's 
warmest admiration, and Streicher went back to his friend 
with the welcome news, that arrangements would be made 
to produce " Fiesco " on the stage. Alterations requiring 
some time were nevertheless indispensable, and it became 
necessary to remove farther from the power of his offended 
prince. Warned by letters from Stuttgart, Schiller and 
his friend resolved to pass to Darmstadt, near Frankfort. 
Their money was nearly gone. Sorely pressed as he was, 
Schiller had so tender a consideration for his parents, that 
he would not apply to them, lest he might bring upon his 
father the suspicion of conniving at his flight. With 
enough barely to defray the expenses of their pilgrimage 
on foot, the two friends set off one day at noon ; rested at 
night in a village ; resumed their way the next morning 
over one of the most striking roads in Europe (the Berg- 
strasse) ; continued their journey for twelve hours ; rested 
from six in the evening till midnight, when they were 
wakened and alarmed by the drums of a reveille. Not- 
withstanding Schiller felt himself unwell, with the early 
morning the journey was resumed ; the day was serene and 
clear, but Schiller's strength failed his spirit ; his step 
grew every moment more weary, his cheek more pale : at 
last, on entering a wood, he was unable to proceed further ; 
he laid himself down for an hour's rest upon the grass ; 
and Streicher, seated on the trunk of a tree, anxious 
and sorrowful, watched beside him. The young man, 
struggling with his destiny, may take heart for the future 
when he contemplates the picture of that wearied sleeper, 
homeless and penniless, but already on his path to the 
conquest of Destiny itself, and the only throne which no 
revolution shakes, and no time decays— in the hearts of 
men. 

They reached Frankfort at last, and Schiller addressed 
a letter to Dalberg : — "When I tell you," he says, " that 
I am flying my country, I describe to you my whole fate. 
My safety obliged me to withdraw in haste from Stutt- 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 227 

gart. My sole hopes rested on a removal to Mannheim ; 
there, I trusted, by your Excellency's assistance, that my 
new drama might enable me to clear myself from debt, and 
permanently better my condition. This was frustrated 
through the hasty departure to which I was compelled. I 
might blush to make such disclosures to you. but I know 
they do not debase me. If my former conduct — if all that 
your Excellency knows of my character — can induce con- 
fidence in my honour, let me frankly ask your assistance. 
Greatly as I need the anticipated profit from " Fiesco.'' the 
play cannot be ready for the theatre in less than five weeks. 
My heart was oppressed — my poetic dreams fled before the 
sense of my condition. But if at the time specified the 
play could be ready, and, I trust, worthy, — from that belief 

I take the courage to ask the advance of what would then 
be due. I need it, perhaps, more now than I may ever do 
hereafter. I owed nearly 200 florins when I left Stuttgart. 
This gives me, I own, more uneasiness than all the care for 
my future fate. I shall have no rest till in that quarter I 
am free." 

After this letter he was more relieved ; and yet, on re- 
turning from the post-office to which he took it, he paused 
on the bridge, beneath which flows the Maine : he gazed 
long in silence on the river, and said at last. ' ; TVhich is 
the deeper, that water or my sufferings ? " But no brave 
man, and no true poet, can remain long despondent in the 
midst of a world enriched by the activity of his kind, and 
upheld by the goodness of his Maker. The very sight of 
that bustling scene ; the vessels sailing to and fro ; the 
river gilded by the setting sun ; the clear evening air ; the 
fresh and cheerful wave ; amidst the smiles of Nature, the 
evidences of that Nature's subjugation to the will and the 
power of man — these gradually drew him from his sadness, 
and re-animated his soul. His verv misfortunes, throwing 
him so wholly on his own resources, quickened his inven- 
tion, and the next evening he announced to his friend, 
that he had conceived the plan of a domestic play, entitled* 

II Louise Miller," which was afterwards completed, and 
finally became famous under the title of "Cabal and Love." 

* According to Madame von Wblzogen (Schiller's sister-in-law), lie had, 
however, first thought of the subject of this play during his military arrest 
at Stuttgart. 

Q 2 



228 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

A letter from Meier arrived at last, to say, that while 
"Fiesco" remained unfit for the stage, Dalberg could not 
make the proposed advance ; that the work must be com- 
pleted before he could say more. No disappointment could 
be more cruel. But Schiller bore it undauntedly. He 
uttered no complaint ; not one harsh, one indignant word 
passed his lips. He prepared only to comply with the 
condition that was imposed. The friends were reduced to 
a few small coins, when Streicher received thirty florins, 
for which he had written to his mother ; and with this aid 
they left Frankfort. A line was, however, first dispatched 
to Meier, requesting him to meet and agree upon some place 
in which "Fiesco" might be completed with safety and in 
repose. 

Finally, it was settled that Schiller should take up his 
residence in an inn at Oggersheim, once more changing 
his name from Hitter to Schmidt ; and here, still accom- 
panied by the devoted Streicher, he shut himself up to 
compose his glorious taskwork. But so much, while most 
occupied, did his mind shrink from what was ordained to 
it, that, instead of completing " Fiesco," his domestic 
drama of " Cabal and Love " engrossed all his thoughts 
and labours. Perhaps in a play which sought to prove the 
tyranny and the prejudice of conventional rank, he found 
something more congenial to his peculiar condition than 
the loftier conception of the conspirator of Genoa. The 
two friends shared one chamber, one bed ; the Poet had 
his play — the Musician his instrument. And Streicher, 
whom we esteem no less for his self-devotion than Schiller 
for his indomitable courage, soothed the labours of his 
friend with the notes of his clavichord. Again their re- 
sources were exhausted ; again poor Streicher applied to his 
mother for the money intended for his professional journey 
to Hamburgh. Necessity then tore Schiller from the new 
work, and restored him to the old. Early in November 
"Fiesco" was completed. 

But fresh disappointments awaited Schiller. After the 
suspense of a week, Dalberg reported of " Fiesco " that a 
part of it was not yet fitted for the stage, and that it must 
either be rejected or improved. Nothing could be more 
chilling, more laconic, more heartless, to all appearance, 
than the reply of this literary courtier. Schiller had been 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 229 

greatly instigated in his flight from Stuttgart by his re- 
liance on Dalberg's professions of esteem and friendship. 
And now not a word to comfort, mnch less a florin to 
support ! Before the laborious student rose the sense of a 
condition thoroughly desolate and alarming — the recol- 
lection of his debts at Stuttgart ; more than all, the 
remorse of having implicated his faithful friend in his own 
ruin. It was evident that Dalberg, with that sympathy 
which all courtiers have for the grievances of all courts, 
regarded Schiller as a political offender, and feared to 
befriend one with whom a Prince was displeased. 

Two resources were left : firstly, to find for the two 
plays a publisher who would advance some money upon 
their probable profits ; and secondly, to take advantage of 
a generous oifer — an invitation which might well put to 
the blush the niggard heartlessness of Dalberg. 

At the Stuttgart Academy, three young men of good 
birth, named Wolzogen, had been educated contempo- 
raneously with Schiller. The eldest of these, Wilhelm, 
was afterwards amongst his most intimate friends ; their 
mother, a widow in straitened circumstances, had known 
and admired the Poet at Stuttgart ; she offered him an 
asylum in a small house she possessed at Bauerbach, about 
two miles from Meiningen. The advancement of her own 
sons was in the hands of the Duke of Wurtemberg. She 
hazarded much by receiving into her house the persecuted 
fugitive ; but the magnanimity of her friendship would not 
take the peril of a good action into account. Thither, 
then, Schiller resolved to fly. A Mannheim bookseller, 
named Schwan, advanced upon " Piesco " sufficient to dis- 
charge the debt incurred at Oggersheim, and defray the 
expenses of the journey to Bauerbach. In a winter's 
night — the snow deep upon the ground — the generous 
Streicher bade him farewell ; or rather, no word was 
spoken, no embrace exchanged — a long and silent clasp of 
the hand was the only token of an affection which had 
endured so much hardship, and consoled through so much 
sorrow. "But yet," says Schiller's German biographer, 
with simple eloquence, "the Musician, after fifty years, 
was filled with grief when he recalled the moment in 
which he had left a truly kingly heart — the noblest of the 
German poets — alone and in misfortune. 



CHAPTEE V. 

Eesidence at Bauerbaeh. 

As on a December evening, 1782, the wanderer beheld, 
beneath the old ruins of the Castle of Henneberg, the 
lights of the scattered houses of the village of Bauerbaeh 
gleaming through the deep snow, he felt, as he himself 
says, " like a shipwrecked man, who struggles at last from 
the waves." Here, though the family themselves were 
absent, everything that could comfort and welcome him, 
awaited. He remained unknown and secure ; a bookseller 
of eminence at Meiningen (Heinwald), who afterwards 
married his sister, was admitted to his secret, and cheered 
his solitude with books and his own society. Sometimes 
he made a companion of the steward of the property, 
jolayed with him at chess, or wandered, with him, through 
the woods which surround that country. 5 * The calm, the 
security and the solitude were, at first, beneficial to his 
mind and to his labours. The two plays were completed, 
and despatched to the bookseller, Schwan. But now, his 
ardent imagination, having thrown off its tasks, began to 
prey upon itself. He passed, though for a short time, and 
with reluctance, into that state common to all good men, 
in proportion to their original affection for their species — 
misanthropy. No man ever was, in reality, a misanthrope, 
but from too high an opinion of mankind, and too keen a 
perception of ideal virtue. " I had embraced," complains 
Schiller, " half the world, with feelings the most glowing, 
to find a lump of ice within my arms." f The wild and 

* A singular anecdote is related by Madame yon Wolzogen. One day, in 
his walk with the steward, Schiller paused in a lonely spot between wild 
rocks, and was seized with a notion that a dead body lay below. In fact, a 
poor carrier had been murdered there, and his corpse had been buried in the 
very place. 

f Shortly after this period, on his settlement at Mannheim, he announced 
his intention of translating Shakspeare's " Timon," and says, "In all 
Shakspeare there is no piece in which he more loudly and eloquently speaks 
to my heart — or in which I have learned more of the Science of Life,"— 
Mem. Thai. Heft. 1, s. 13. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 231 

desolate scenery around him — the dreariness of winter — 
served to increase the gloom that seized him. His prospects 
were, in reality, snch as might render the hardest sensitive, 
and the boldest anxious. The present might be safe, but 
at any moment he might be cast again upon the world. 
His gratitude to his friends made him feel that his asylum 
must be resigned the moment the Grand Duke discovered 
it. And, even as it was, could his spirit long bear the 
thought of dependence, obscurity, and disguise ? Still he 
was without a country, still without a career. He 
seriously thought of abandoning poetry, and returning to 
the medical profession ; sometimes the wilder notion of 
exile to England — to America — possessed him. This state 
of mind was, perhaps, fortunately invaded by a romantic 
and hopeless fancy, rather than the love for which he mis- 
took it. 

Madame von TVolzogen visited Bauerbach. 

In Charlotte, the youngest daughter of his benefactress, 
Schiller found an image to replace his Laura. He could 
not expect encouragement from the mother, nor does it 
appear that his attachment was returned by Charlotte ; 
but he was at that age when feeling is easily awakened, 
and as easily misunderstood by the heart which feels it. 
The love of youth, before it settles for life, hovers over all 
to whom the fancy allures it. The Cupid, with the ex- 
panded wings, and the arrow on the string, is but the 
false Anteros : — In the true Eros, the wings are folded, and 
the bow is broken. Certainly this was the most critical 
period in the life of Schiller, moral and intellectual. If 
new persecutions, whether of power or of opinion, had now 
befallen him, it is at least doubtful whether he would 
have ever attained to a name at once so revered and so 
beloved — whether indignation and disgust might not, in a 
spirit so proud and so impetuous, have ripened into per- 
manent defiance of the world, and its existing orders and 
forms. * Who shall say whether it would have been in the 
power of Schiller, in the nature of man, to have preserved 
the genial purity and kindliness which had been the early 
concomitants and softeners of his restless and fiery genius, 
if, at this moment, he had undergone from the public of 

* "Oil!" he exclaims, in a letter to iladanie Ton TTolzogen, "you 
cannot believe how necessary it is to me to find noble human natures ! " 



232 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

his fatherland the same fearful calumny and injustice 
which, in the anguish and the trial of existence, hooted 
Byron into exile ? None of the earlier writings of Byron 
can be compared for a moment, in their offences against 
settled opinions, to those which the youth of Schiller sent 
forth to agitate society and inflame the mind. "The 
Robbers," " Fiesco," " Cabal and Love," are, one and all, 
defiances of Prescription. The revolutionary stamp is upon 
each. To ordinary observers they might well appear the 
more dangerous from the systematic purpose which seemed 
to pervade them all. In England, such works would have 
given impunity to the slander of literary envy, and the 
bigotry of political hate. But there was a nobler temper 
in the German public ; — there was granted to Schiller what, 
despite the greater temptations of birth, and beauty, and 
prevalent example, was never conceded to our immortal 
countryman — the allowance for unsettled youth and im- 
perfect education ; — and the result should be a lesson to 
the public in all lands. His manhood was the splendid 
redeemer of his youth. 

Suddenly, in the midst of Schiller's anxious gloom and 
conflicting emotions — at the very moment when hypo- 
chondria was fast darkening over his heart and unnerving 
his intellect — the sun broke out upon him. The Duke of 
Wiirtemberg, whose resentment never seems to have been 
ungenerous or vindictive, tacitly relinquished all thoughts 
of persecuting a man in whom the whole of Germany 
began to feel a romantic interest. The courtier Dalberg 
perceived that the time was come when, without impru- 
dence, he might bring to the aid of his theatre the author 
of the most popular drama of the time. He invited Schiller 
to Mannheim. The young Poet's plays were to be pro- 
duced upon the stage — the object of an ambition, modest 
as to temporal means, vast as to intellectual empire, was 
attained. He was appointed, with a fixed, though very 
limited salary, Poet to the Theatre at Mannheim, then 
the first in Germany. On the evening of the 22nd July, 
1783, he arrived at the town in w r hich the foundations of 
his dramatic glory had been laid ; and, at the house of 
Meier he was once more beheld — but, this time, with 
a cheerful and radiant countenance — by his faithful 
Streicher. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Residence at Mannheim. 

But it is one thing to print a drama — another to repre- 
sent it. " Fiesco " still required great alterations to adapt 
it to the stage. One essential canse of the theatrical 
success of Schiller, was the earnest readiness with which 
he lent himself to the suggestions of practical criticism. 
He was not like many of our young authors who write for 
the stage, and will not sacrifice a passage to what they call 
the arrogant ignorance of managers and actors. Unless 
the Poet obtains and follows the advice of manager and 
actor, he may depend upon it that he will never command 
an audience. While employed upon the task of revising 
" Fiesco," and its companion Drama, Schiller was seized 
with fever, which exhausted his strength and protracted 
his labours. But, in nothing is Schiller more an example 
to us than in his iron perseverance and diligent industry. 
These were the very elements of his genius. Perhaps they 
are so of all genius that accomplishes what is great 
and lasting. Through weakness and through sickness he 
toiled on. 

"Fiesco" was not so successful at Mannheim as had 
been anticipated. Schiller complained that the public 
of the Palatine could not understand it ; that with them 
Republican Liberty was an empty sound. But, in 
Berlin and Frankfort, it produced a considerable sen- 
sation, which reacted on the Mannheim audiences, and 
soon secured its fame. It was followed, in March or April,* 
by " Cabal and Love," which obtained the most brilliant 
reception. 

On the first representation of this drama, Streicher found 
his reward for all his friendship. He sate by the side of 
Schiller ; he heard the rapturous applauses it excited ; he 

* On the 9th of March, according to Schwab ; somewhere in April, 
according to Hoffmeister. 



234 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

saw all eyes turned to the Poet ; he had shared the adver- 
sity — he participated in the triumph. 

Schiller's existence was now assured. He had found a 
country, as well as confirmed his fame. He was acknow- 
ledged a subject of the Elector Palatine. He had no 
longer any cause of apprehension from the Duke of Wiir- 
temberg. He was elected a member of the German 
Literary Society established at Mannheim. The circle of 
his intimates was thus enlarged amongst men of the same 
pursuits, and his ambition corrected and guided, by com- 
parison between himself and others. New resources were 
opened to him ; and his ambition could not readily settle 
upon any one of the numerous objects by which it was 
allured. He proposed at first to translate " Timon of 
Athens," and " Macbeth," but ultimately returned to " Don 
Charles." This was the first drama, commenced in the 
retirement of Bauerbach, which he had attempted in verse ; 
and herein he first ascended, though with an uncertain 
step, towards the higher and purer realm of ideal fiction, 
in which his genius finally fixed its home. A marked 
change, indeed, was now visible in his modes of thought. 
He took loftier conceptions of the aims and duties of the 
Poet. He became aware of the moral deficiencies of " The 
Robbers ; " he meditated a sequel to that play, which 
should be an ample apology for its predecessor, and in 
which " all immorality should be resolved into the highest 
moral." t He reassumed his early instincts of the preacher; 
not indeed as from the pulpit, but from the boards. He 
laid down to others and to himself the principle, that the 
Stage should take its rank with the Church and the School 
amongst the primary institutions of a state. In propor- 
tion as representation must be more vivid than dead book- 
lore and cold narration, so assuredly might he think that 
the stage should work lessons deeper and more lasting 
than mere moralising systems. J Whether he did not over- 
estimate the possible influence of the theatre in modern 
times, may be reasonably doubted. But that very ex- 

* At the end of the second act the audience shouted applause so much 
more emphatically than usual, that Schiller, taken by surprise, rose and 
bowed. 

f Schiller's "Brief an Dalberg," s. 85, &c. 

t Hoffmeister. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 235 

aggeration could only serve to purify his ambition and 
elevate his aims. 

Meanwhile, his pecuniary circumstances, though im- 
proved, and though, perhaps, sufficient for a strict econo- 
mist, were not adequate to the wauts of a man so liberal, so 
charitable, and so careless of detail and method. Wrapt 
in his ideal realm, he forgot the exigencies of practical 
life. "Hogarth," says his biographer, "might have been 
inspired by the disorder of the young Poet's chamber." 
His debt at Stuttgart still weighed upon him, till at length 
his landlord lent him the money to defray it. He resolved 
upon new efforts to emancipate himself from all difficulties. 
He undertook a periodical called the " Rhenish Thalia," 
from w^hich he anticipated to reap an independence. In the 
announcement of this work he speaks thus of his own 
views and hopes : "I write as a Citizen of the -^ 
World who serves no prince. Early I left my -, t-^\ 
father-land, exchanging it for the great world, 
w T hich I only beheld at a distance, and through a glass." 
He proceeds to speak of his education ; his poetic enthu- 
siasm ; his " Robbers ; " his night from Wurtemberg ; and 
thus continues : — " All my former connexions are dis- 
solved. The Public has become my all, my study, my 
sovereign, and my confidant. To the Public alone hence- 
forth I belong. Before this tribunal, and this tribunal 
only, I take my stand. Something of greatness hovers 
over me as I resolve to know no restraint but the sen- 
tence of the world — appeal to no throne but the soul of 
Man ! " 

This frank and stately egotism was thoroughly charac- 
teristic of Schiller. And the reader will readily understand 
how much, as in the case of Byron, the admiration for the 
Poet became associated with interest in the Man. Grave 
men, whom he did not know, wrote to offer him their 
homage ; fair maidens, whom he had not seen, transmitted 
to him their miniatures. But in the midst of his labours 
and his increasing fame, his heart was lonely. He jDined 
for love and for female society. In the bustle of the town 
he recalled with a sigh the retirement of Bauerbach. For- 
getful of the gloom which had, there, so often overshadowed 
his solitude, he looked self-deludingly back to the winter 
months he had spent amidst its pine-trees as amongst 



236 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

the happiest of his life. The image of Charlotte von 
Wolzogen haunted him ; but it was rather as the ideal 
Egeria of the nympholept than as the one living woman 
who renders all others charmless and indifferent. " To be 
iinked to one," he says, " who shares with us joy and 
sorrow ; who meets us in our emotions, and accommodates 
her mood to our humours ; at her breast to release our 
souls from the thousand distractions, the thousand wild 
wishes and unruly passions ; and drown all the bitterness 
of Fortune in the enjoyment of domestic calm ; — ah ! such 
were the true delight of life." He proposed openly to 
Madame von Wolzogen for her daughter Charlotte ; but, 
thoroughly convinced at last of the hopelessness of that 
pursuit, his desire for love in the abstract soon found its 
object elsewhere. Margaret, the daughter of Schwan the 
bookseller, was one in whom he might woo an equal, and 
reasonably hope to find a return for his affection. She pos- 
sessed great personal beauty, and a lively turn of mind ; 
" rather devoted,'' say, with some malice, the good German 
biographers, " to the world, to literature, and to art, than 
to the tranquil domestic duties." She was then nineteen 
years old, and the death of her mother had placed her at 
the head of the household. Schiller's literary intercourse 
with her father necessarily drew him much into her 
society; and about the autumn of 1784, the fair Margaret 
gained possession of a heart still somewhat too inflammable 
for constancy. * 

With the new love he resumed the new drama ; and 
the passion for Margaret burns in many a line which 

■jhnK proclaims the affection of the ill-fated Carlos. 
But new circumstances began to conspire against 
the repose of Schiller, and his continuance at Mannheim. 
The periodical he had commenced, without greatly in- 
creasing his resources, embroiled him with the actors. 
Those worthy personages were mightily concerned at the 
freedom of his criticisms ; he in turn was no less aggrieved 

* It appears, indeed, that in the interval Schiller had admitted the in- 
fluence of some wilder and less refined passion than either Margaret Schwan 
or Charlotte von Wolzogen had inspired, and to which he alludes with frank 
regret, in a letter some years afterwards to the lady whom he married. The 
object of this passing 'fancy has apparently baffled the research of his 
biographers. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLEE. 237 

by their slovenly repetition of his verses, and their irre- 
verent treatment of himself. His ambition had been 
diverted into new paths, by the dignity of Councillor * of 
the Duchy of Weimar, conferred upon him by the Duke, 
who in a visit to Mannheim had granted him an audience. 
The honour in which literary men were held in the court 
of Weimar inflamed his imagination. He had not yet 
entirely resigned the practical world for the ideal ; and in 
Schiller, despite his want of economy and method, there 
were talents and capacities which were not restricted solely 
to the pen. Oue of those who knew him best says of 
him, no doubt with truth, " that if he had been with- 
held from the destiny of a great poet, he could not have 
failed, perforce, to have become a remarkable man of 
action. t For action Schiller certainly possessed those 
peculiar qualities which usually ensure success in a career 
once fairly opened ; — indomitable will — the power of 
earnest application — inflexible honour — and a strong sense 
of justice. 

The rank of Councillor to the Duchy of Weimar 
thus opened to him a path more alluring than that in 
which he passed, not over the flowers his youth had 
fancied, as Poet to a Theatre. After much consultation 
with some friends at Leipsic, and with Schwan, and in the 
midst of all kinds of disgusts and difficulties in his resi- 
dence at Mannheim, it was determined that he should 
remove to Leipsic. He resolved there to devote himself 
to Jurisprudence, and to use Poetry, if we may borrow the 
admirable saying of Sir Walter Scott, "as his staff, not 
his crutch." He communicated these intentions to 
Streicher, who shared his new enthusiasm. What might 
not so much industry, in a mind already exercised in 
severe thought and arduous studies, accomplish in a few 
years ? Some honourable appointment at the least in one 
of the small Saxon Courts. The friends grew warm over 
their hopes, and agreed at last to suspend all correspond- 
ence till the Poet was Minister, and the Musician Chapel 
Master ! Thus ends — amidst new projects, and on the 

* A merely nominal dignity — but it is difficult for an Englishman to 
comprehend the eagerness with, which these petty distinctions are sought 
for in Germany. 

f Scharnenstein. At a later period Goethe expressed the same opinion. 



238 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

eve of a new flight — the First Period in the life and career 
of Friedrich Schiller. 

He was only in his twenty- sixth year — and how much 
-ijqx had he effected ! His name was already a house- 
hold word in Europe. His genius had not been 
stationary ; the most marked improvement in taste, in 
thought, in self-cultivation distinguished his more recent 
from his earlier compositions. Even at this time, the 
genial and gentle Wieland had prophesied that Eriedrich 
Schiller would be the first man of his age. The very mis- 
fortunes, the very errors of his life, had served to augment 
the true knowledge of genius — viz., experience of the heart 
— its sufferings — its passions — its infirmities. In" Fiesco," 
as in " The Robbers," there is much that is distorted and 
exaggerated, but the characters- move in a far higher 
atmosphere — the language is chaster and more severe — 
the descriptive passages want nothing but rhythm to have 
the beauty and the charm of poetry. All the men are 
drawn on the large scale of heroes. The magnificence of 
Piesco, and the austerity of Verrina, are no doubt con- 
trasted with too distinct a force for the delicacy of art, but 
the fault is that of a giant, who has not yet learned to 
subdue and regulate his strength. Still more promise of 
real and permanent excellence is to be found in " Cabal 
and Love ; " for, to idealise common life is impossible, save 
to those who have already perceived the great truths in 
which high Poetry moves and breathes. In these plays, 
the influences which we have noticed in our brief sketch 
of the state of German Literature, are visible. Through 
the lurid and stormy phantasies of French republicanism 
— through the hazy mists of Rousseau's passionate senti- 
ment — may yet be discovered glimpses of the robust 
humanity of Herder — the noble earnestness of Lessing — 
the last especially. " Emilia Galotti " speaks in the Do- 
mestic Tragedy of "Cabal and Love," and its Odoardo 
transfuses something of his high spirit into the Verrina 
of "Piesco." Yet finer influences than even these were 
now at work npon a mind ever shooting onward, or mount- 
ing upward. The study of Shakspeare — necessarily 
intense to one meditating the translation of " Timon " and 
" Macbeth "—led Schiller, not indeed to imitate a genius 
wholly dissimilar to his own, but to ponder upon the 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 239 

attributes of that genius which were within his reach. 
He began the transition from what may be called the 
passionate and declamatory drama to the intellectual and 
analytical. He says of the hero of the tragedy on which 
he was now employed, " Carlos has the soul from Shaks- 
peare's Hamlet — the pulse from me," There is little 
in common, it is true, between Carlos and Hamlet; but 
Schiller had made a great progress in his conceptions 
of art, when he studied a Hamlet, in order to create a 
Carlos. 

But in this, as in the several periods of his life, the 
mirror of his heart and his genius is to be found in h ; s 
minor poems. In their fervour and exaggeration — their 
beauties and defects — lives immortally the youth of 
Schiller. 



CHAPTER VII. 



SECOND PEEIOD. 



Schiller's arrival at Leipsic — Proposes for Margaret Schwan — Removes to 
Dresden — His habits, studies, &c. — His infatuation, and departure for 
Weimar. 

Schiller arrived at Leipsic in the midst of its famous 
Fair. His name was soon bruited abroad, and the throng 
pressed to see him. But though Schiller was not without 
that noble vanity which pants for applause, and take3 
enjoyment in renown, the curiosity of idlers could only 
offend his taste, and wound his pride. "It is a peculiar 
thing," he says, writing to Schwan, "to have an Author's 
name. The few men of worth and mark who on this 
account offer their acquaintance, and whose esteem confers 
pleasure, are too greatly outweighed by the swarm who, 
like flesh-flies, buzz around the Author as a monster, and 
claim him as a colleague on the strength of a few sheets of 
blotted paper. Many cannot get it into their heads that 
the author of "The Robbers" should be like any other 
mother's son. They expected at least a crop, the boots of 
a postilion, and a hunting-whip! " 

Meanwhile Schiller continued his contributions to " The 
Thalia," in which a considerable portion of " Carlos " 
appeared ; laboured with assiduity at the completion of 
that drama; and composed, in a happy moment, "The 
Hymn to Joy," by far the noblest lyrical poem he had yet 
achieved. Insensibly the more worldly ambition with 
which he had quitted Mannhein, died away. The pro- 
fession of Jurisprudence was not adopted ; but, still 
anxious to found a livelihood upon some basis more stable 
than Literature, he meditated a return to Medicine ; and, 
encouraged, perhaps, by the attention and respect he 
received at Leipsic, he ventured now to demand the hand 
of Margaret Schwan. After a preface at once modest and 
manly, he thus opened himself to her father : " My free 
and unconstrained access to your house afforded me the 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 241 

opportunity of intimate acquaintance with yonr amiable 
daughter; and the frank kind treatment with which both yon 
and she honoured me, tempted my heart to entertain the 
bold wish of becoming your son. My prospects have hitherto 
been dim and vague ; they begin now to alter in my favour. 
I will strive with more continuous vigour when the goal is 
clear. Do you decide whether I can reach it, when the 
dearest wish of my heart supports my zeal. Yet two 
short years, and my whole fortune will be determined. . . . 
The Duke of Weimar was the first person to whom I dis- 
closed myself ; his anticipating goodness, and the declara- 
tion that he took an interest in my happiness, induced me 
to confess that that happiness depended on a union with 
your noble daughter. He expressed satisfaction at my 
choice. I have reason to hope he will do more, should it 
come to the point of completing my happiness by this 
union. I shall add nothing further. I know well that 
hundreds of others might offer your daughter a more 
splendid fate than I at this moment can promise her ; but 
that any other heart can be more worthy of her, I venture 
to deny." * 

A bookseller is generally the last person to choose, as 
his son-in-law, an Author. He has seen too much of the 
vicissitudes of an Author's life, and of the airy basis of 
an Author's hopes in the future, to be flattered by the pro- 
posals of a suitor who finds it easier to charm the world 
than to pay the butcher. He wrote to Schiller a refusal, 
implying that his daughter's character was not in unison 
with her wooer's. Till then, a correspondence had been 
carried on between the young persons ; this, Schiller 
properly and honourably now broke off, to Margaret's sur- 
prise, and apparently to her grief, for her father had not 
communicated to her Schiller's proposal, — a discreet re- 
serve which seems to prove that he did not reckon on her 
free acquiescence in his reply. The friendship between 
Schiller and Schwan, however, still continued, and the re- 
membrance of Margaret never wholly faded from Schiller's 
heart. " Like all noble and manly natures," says Madame 
von Wolzogen, " Schiller ever retained an affectionate 
remembrance of the woman who had inspired him with 

* We have borrowed the translation of this extract fiTin Carlyle's "Life 
of Schiller" — the Boston edition, 1833. 

n 



242 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

tender emotion. These recollections moved him always, 
but he rarely spoke of them ; for love with him was 
always earnest and solemn ; not the sensual and fickle 
boy, but the young Divinity, — who unites himself with 
Psyche." 

Perhaps, to dissipate his disappointment by new change, 
Schiller yielded to the invitation of friends he had se- 
cured at Dresden, and at the end of the summer he re- 
paired to that city, and made a home in the house of 
Korner, lately appointed Councillor of Appeals * (Appella- 
tions-Rath), and newly married to Minna Stock, an enthu- 
siastic admirer of S chiller, f 

Korner's house was placed on the banks of the Elbe, 
near Loschwitz. A summer-house in the garden, sur- 
rounded by vineyards and pine-woods, was soon surren- 
dered to the Poet, and became his favourite retreat. Here 
"Don Carlos" made effective, though not rapid progress. 
This Tragedy, the first (as we have before observed) in 
which Schiller superadded the purer form and the more 
refined delineations of Poetry to the vigour and effect of 
the Drama, put the seal upon his fame. Hitherto, with all 
the admiration of the many, he had not won to himself 
that more durable, that more enviable reputation, which is 
maintained and confirmed by the graver few. But judges, 
the most critical and refined, shared for "Don Carlos," in 
the closet, the enthusiasm it excited on the stage. 

But, while engaged in the completion of this Drama, 
Schiller's prodigious activity had already extended the 
realm his genius was destined to subdue and overspread. 
Besides the sketch of a Play — " The Misanthrope " — never 
finished, he conceived the idea of his Romance, called 
" The Ghost Seer," and collected materials for the his- 
torical works he began to meditate. For History, indeed, 
his mind was already prepared by the earnest and thought- 
ful study of character, and of the philosophy of events, 
which had been brought to bear on " Don Carlos." And 
now this restless and ever-inquiring mind arrived at that 
stage in which, between the enthusiasm of youth, and the 
wisdom of manhood, is so often placed the transition- 

* Father to the poet Theodor Komer. 

f Minna Stock was one of the young ladies who had honoured Schiller 
with their miniatures. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 243 

interval of Doubt. That intensity of religious faith and 
conviction which had characterised his boyhood, had, 
perhaps, been somewhat roughly shaken by the hard 
bigotry of his teachers at the Stuttgart Academy; but 
there is evidence to show that it existed during the com- 
position of the "Robbers." Amongst his earlier Poems is 
one called " Letter from Julius to Baphael, from an un- 
published Romance. " This Romance afterwards took the 
shape and title of " Philosophical Letters between Julius 
and Raphael," of which only a fragment was printed, but 
in which the scepticism of the Author is first apparent. 
There is no doubt that this work was remodelled and re- 
written during Schiller's sojourn at Dresden, and no reason 
to suppose that, in its earlier form, it contained the matter 
for just offence, subsequently admitted. 

In these letters appears a crude and wavering conflict 
between Spinozism and Kantism. With Kant's great 
work on " Pure Reason," Schiller seems to have been first 
acquainted, but only by hearsay, at Leipsic or Dresden, 
between 1785-87. It was not till some years afterwards, 
in 1791, that he studied Kant at the fountain-head, and 
learned from him, if not a precisely orthodox Christianity, 
at least that aesthetical form of religion to which the great 
German has led so many, who won Id otherwise have been 
lost in the pathless wilds of infidelity. But now, much 
that Schiller composed, shows the doubt and conflict of 
his mind — a state, to one so- constitutionally devout, of 
great anguish and desjDondency, and to which, in his later 
writings, he has many solemn and pathetic allusions. In 
the " Philosophical Letters " is to be found the illogical 
yet brilliant fallacy of Pantheism, which bewildered hope- 
lessly the more erratic intellect of Shelley, but which did 
not long delude the robust understanding of Schiller. In 
the Poems which he composed at this time, denominated 
by critics the Second Period of Schiller, the conflict is 
visible, though subdued. It was in conformity with this 
state of mind that Schiller — in whom the intellect was no 
less strong than the imagination — should turn to that 
positive and actual Something which is found in the 
external history of man. Plans too large for one writer to 
accomplish, hovered before his ambition — some history 
that might be to practical narrative what the vast con- 

e 2 



244 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

ception of Herder suggested to the theory in which his- 
tory should be told. 

He meditated, and, in part, undertook, what, indeed, if 
ever accomplished suitably, would be one of the greatest 
records in the world — "A History of all the more re- 
markable Conspiracies and Revolutions of Modern Times." 
Meanwhile his private life had at once its charms and its 
sorrows. The love of solitude still clung to him. He 
was seen in the morning, wandering along the banks of 
the Elbe, thoughtful and alone ; or, like Byron at Venice, 
w r hen the lightning flashed and the storm burst, tossed in 
his gondola upon the waves. He disliked, and sought to 
shun, miscellaneous, and especially what is called fashion- 
able society ; he carried his earnest mind, and his love of 
freedom, into all circles, — impatient of the talk that was 
frivolous, and the etiquette that was restrained. But he 
generally devoted some portion of the day to the inter- 
change of mind with the congenial ; — artists, men of 
letters, or even those who, simple and unaffected, interested 
his heart, if they could not appeal to his intellect. 

Shy and silent in the crowd, he was eloquent with those 
familiar to him, and his conversation was yet more charm- 
ing from his simple kindliness, than from the stores which 
it displayed : this was the bright side of his private life, 
— the reverse of the medal is only darkly shadowed out. 
Before his visit to Dresden, Schiller had formed an ac- 
quaintance with a young woman named Sophy Albrecht, 
intended for the stage ; he had taken a strong interest in 
her professional career, and he met her again at Dresden, 
as one of the most celebrated actresses of the day. He 
visited at her house on familiar terms, and there, one 
evening, after the play was over, he saw a young, blue-eyed 
stranger, who made upon him an impression equally deep 
and sudden. This girl was the eldest daughter of a Saxon 
widow, who lived upon a small pension, and whose husband 
had been an officer in the army. He afterwards en- 
countered the fair Julia (such was the young lady's name) 
at the " Redoute," and ventured to accost her. The 
mother was, by all accounts, an artful and abandoned per- 
son, who did not scruple to put to profit the beauty of her 
daughter. She saw, in the admiration of so distinguished 
a poet, the means of widening Julia's already lucrative 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 245 

notoriety. Schiller was accordingly lured into an intimacy 
which occasioned the most serions anxiety to his friends.* 
It seems uncertain whether Julia, who appears to have 
followed her mother's depraved counsels with something of 
reluctant shame, returned the passion she had inspired. 
There was that in Schiller to have won a worthier affection, 
despite the unflattering portrait which Sophy Albrecht, in 
her coarse taste of actress, has drawn of the young Poet. 

Schiller, no doubt, at that time, and indeed from his 
entrance into youth, had lost the mere physical beauty 
which he seems to have possessed as a child, when his 
sister compared his countenance, shaded with locks of gold, 
" to an Angel's head." He w r as tall, extremely thin, though 
muscular, and large of bone ; his neck was long (a noble 
defect, which is never without dignity), and his dress was 
rude and neglected. His face was not handsome, perhaps, 
in the eyes of actresses, — whose profession leads them to 
admire show and colour in all things, — but so noble a 
countenance has rarely been given to the sons of Genius ; 
true, the complexion was pale, the cheeks somewhat hollow, 
and the dark auburn hair, though rich and profuse, had a 
deep tinge of red, but the forehead was lofty and massive, 
somewhat receding towards the temples when regarded in 
profile (a peculiarity found in most men of characters 
brave and determined). His eyes, described variously as 
blue, brown, and dark gray, and probably shifting in colour 
with the light, f were, though deep-sunken, singularly 
brilliant and expressive ; and his nose, if too large for 
perfect symmetry of feature, was finely formed. His per- 
sonal appearance, in short, harmonised with his intellectual 
character : and as, in Goethe, tbe pre-eminent attribute 
both of outward form and mental accomplishment was 
beauty ; J so, in Schiller, the pre-eminent attribute in both 

* Doring, Madame yon "Wolzogen, Hoffmeister, Schwab. 

f Madame you Wolzogen says their colour was undecided, between blue 
and light brown. His sister calls them blue : one of his College friends, 
dark gray. 

J Goethe was, perhaps, the handsomest poet of whom we have any record. 
With a beauty of face not inferior to that of Milton or Byron, he had ad- 
vantages of stature denied to either,— and that air of majestic dignity which 
is beauty in itself. We remember being very much struck with a com- 
parison between two portraits of Byron and Goethe, taken when each was 
about the same age, viz., twenty-one. There was a strong likeness between 
the two, though Goethe's features, not less symmetrical, were larger and 
more manly : but the contrast in the expression was startling. The Ger- 



24 G THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

was nobleness. If, as one who remembered him well 
declares, the colossal bust of Dannecker alone shows him 
as he really was in life, no one who has ever seen that like- 
ness will deny, that it is a eonntenance which strikingly 
arrests the admiration, and deeply engrosses the interest — 
a certain grandeur, both of outline and expression, dwarfs 
into effeminacy whatever portraits of more justly pro- 
portioned beauty may be placed beside it. But the actress, 
describing Schiller at this time, could see only, as was 
natural to such an observer, the gray, threadbare frock — 
the general disdain of the toilette — the awkwardness given 
by pride and reserve to the movements of the tall figure — 
the indulgence of Spanish snuff — and the stoop of the 
" ever- thoughtful head." . . Whether or not the fair Julia 
regarded Schiller with the same eyes as the actress is a 
matter, however, of very little importance : — not so the 
love felt by Schiller, since it not only gave rise to some of 
his poems, but coloured many immortal pages in the 
" Ghost-seer." His friends did their best to dispel his in- 
fatuation, and tear him from a connexion which they con- 
sidered disgraceful to his name, ruinous to his means, and 
injurious to his prospects ; finally, they succeeded in their 
appeals. He appears, indeed, to have become aware of the 
treachery * practised on him ; and, after many a struggle 
between reason and passion, at last he tore himself away. 

He had long meditated a journey to Weimar — then to 
Germany what Athens, in the time of Pericles, was to 
Greece ; he now accepted a cordial invitation from a friend 
of his, Madame f von Kalb ; and, in the month of July, 
1787, he arrived at the little Court, brightened by a con- 
stellation of Art and Genius, before which the wealth and 
splendour of every capital in Europe was, at that day, but 
as foil and tinsel. 

man lady who showed us the portraits, observed with truth, — " "What 
dejection and discontent with the world is already stamped on Lord Byron's 
face ! — What calm, yet sanguine energy — what hopeful self-confidence in 
Goethe's!" The several expression in either countenance seemed almost 
like a prophecy of either fate. 

* Julia had directed Schiller not to enter the house when a light was to 
be seen in a certain chamber, upon pretence of being then engaged in the 
domestic circle, while in truth she was receiving some more favoured 
admirer. 

f We have preferred (in this, and other instances), as more familiar to 
the English ear, the title of Madame to that of Fmu, which is of course 
more rigidly correct. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Society at "Weimar — Character of the Duchess Amelia — The von Lengefelds 
— Schiller in the retirement of Rudolstadt — First meeting with Goethe 
— Study of Greek — Death of ^ladaine von "Wolzogen — Schiller accepts 
the Professorship of History at Jena — Life at that University — Court- 
ship of Charlotte von Lengefeld — Schiller's marriage. 

Goethe was absent from Weimar, — in " those fair 
i h nh Ansonian climates," the influence of which so 
powerfully affected his plastic genius, and served 
to give to his after- creations that severe and statue-like 
repose which has, with all the beauty, something of the 
coldness and the terror, of Medusa : — Goethe was absent ; 
but at Weimar were Herder, Wieland, Bottiger, and other 
eminent men. Schiller was not disappointed in the charm 
of the place. " I think here," he writes, " at least in the 
territory of Weimar, to end my days — and at last, once 
more, to find a country." And yet Schiller was not at 
first fully appreciated at the court to which he was ad- 
mitted. The Augustan character which Weimar had 
obtained, originated in the tastes and the talents of 
Amelia, mother to the reigning Duke. Her especial 
favourite was the polished and graceful Wieland, whom 
she had appointed tutor to her son, Karl August. She had 
been left a widow at* the age of nineteen; and fulfilled 
the duties of Regent during the minority of the young 
Prince. 

To considerable talents for public business, and in- 
tuitive knowledge of the world, this remarkable woman 
added a strong affection for art ; and blended a thorough 
enjoyment of society with a keen thirst for knowledge. 
She acquired some acquaintance with the learned lan- 
guages from Wieland, and translated Propertius. The 
circle of eminent men that she drew aronnd her was 
attracted no less by her manners than her information 
and her abilities. But Schiller's genius, as yet made 
manifest, was not very congenial to a taste half French 



248 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

and half classical ; and the Duchess-Mother does not 
seem to have been aware that, in the rude strength of 
the young Suabian, Germany had secured a classic 
author of her own * Of all the literary men then at 
Weimar, the amiable Wieland was the most cordial to 
Schiller. Herder welcomed him, " but without warmth." 
Not till a much later period does the Duke himself appear 
to have taken any very vivid interest in his great visitor. 
The style of conversation, though intellectual and re- 
fined, was not that which Schiller was likely to enjoy 
— it was too critical, and perhaps too courtly — " more 
was babbled than was thought. " But nothing is more 
beneficial to a man of genius, yet young, than to frequent 
society in which he is not over-estimated ; — nothing 
more injurious than to be the sole oracle of his circle. 
From that period we date a purer and more dignified 
taste in Schiller — the tone of good society henceforth 
entered into his writings, and improved his manners : 
without weakening the one, it brought ease; without 
marring the simplicity of the other, it served to soften and 
make social. 

At the end of October, Schiller made an excursion to 
Meiningen, on a visit to his eldest sister, who had lately 
married Reinwald. Madame von Wolzogen was also at 
Meiningen ; at her house he found his old college friend, 
Wilhelm ; and, with this companion he returned towards 
Weimar. They took the journey on horseback, and pro- 
posed by the way to visit some relations of M. von Wolzogen 
— a memorable visit ; for now Schiller approached that 
bright period of his life when his wanderings and appren- 
ticeship of mind and heart were alike to cease — when his 
genius settled into art — when his affections were con- 
centered in a home. 

At Rudolstadt, on the banks of " the soft winding 
Saale," in a valley bounded by blue mountains and 
sloping woodlands, lived a Madame von Lengefeld, with 
two daughters ; the elder, Caroline, married to M. von 
Beulwitz, Hofrath of Rudolstadt, to whom (more distin- 
guished by the name she acquired in a second marriage, 

* Schiller attributes to the good offices of Goethe (despite his absence) the 
access to the Duchess Amelia. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 249 

von "W olzogen) we are indebted for a delightful, though 
somewhat high-flown Biography of Schiller ; and the 
younger, Charlotte, unmarried, and then in her twenty- 
first year. The father had died when the children had 
severally arrived at the ages of thirteen and ten. Till that 
time they had been brought up in close retirement. But 
a situation at the Court of Weimar being destined for 
Charlotte when she should arrive at a fitting age, Madame 
von Lengefeld deemed it advisable to remove for a short 
time into Switzerland, as affording better facilities for 
the kind of education necessary for a girl intended to mix 
in the society of a brilliant and polished court. Three 
years before the date on which we now enter, the two 
sisters, who were related to the Wolzogens, had seen 
Schiller for the first time at Mannheim, and been favour- 
ably struck by his appearance. Madame von Lengefeld 
was then on her return from Switzerland ; and the mar- 
riage of her elder daughter to M. von Beulwitz. served to 
settle her residence at Kudolstadt. The younger daughter, 
Charlotte, was highly prepossessing both in form and face. 
To borrow the description of her sister, " the expression of 
the purest goodness of heart animated her features ; and 
her eye beamed only truth and innocence." She had a 
talent for landscape- drawing, and wrote poetry with grace 
and feeling. But above all, she had sympathy with what- 
ever, in others, was noble in character, or elevated in 
genius ; — her temper was sweet, and her disposition 
affectionate, faithful, and sincere. 

At that time, however, Charlotte von Lengefeld was 
suffering under the melancholy which succeeds to the first 
fair illusions of life. Her early affections had been given 
to one from whom Fate had divided her. Her lover was 
in the army, and his duties called him to a distant 
part of the globe. Whether there were other obstacles, 
besides those of the young man's precarious profession, 
does not appear clear ; but the family were opposed to 
the connection, and Charlotte von Lengefeld obeyed 
their wishes in struggling against the inclination she had 
formed. 

Nothing could be more solitary and remote than the 
little valley in which the Lengefelds dwelt. jSTo high-road 
intersected it : a stranger was a phenomenon. The appear- 



250 THE LIFE OF SCHILLEH. 

ance of two horsemen along the straggling street, one dark 
November evening, sufficed to create curiosity and interest. 
One of the riders, as he presented himself to the Lenge- 
felds, playfully concealed his face in his mantle, but the 
ladies recognised their cousin, Wilhelm von Wolzogen. 

nhnn The other was unknown or unremembered, till 
his companion announced the already famous 
name of Schiller. The simple and shy Suabian, usually 
distant with strangers, found himself at home at once in 
the family circle he had entered. The conversation fell on 
his recent publication, " The Philosophical Letters," and 
on his earlier poems. The earnest Schiller wished the 
Lengefelds to become acquainted with his " Carlos/' A 
single evening sufficed to form an intimacy. On his 
departure, Schiller had already conceived the project of 
spending the next summer at Rudolstadt. 

It so chanced that Wilhelm von Wolzogen had, from 
the early period of his student life at Stuttgart, cherished 
a romantic attachment to his fair cousin, Caroline von 
Lengefeld — now Madame von Beulwitz. Her marriage 
was not happy, and her health was delicate and infirm. 
Perhaps these circumstances served to confirm in Wolzogen 
an affection that then seemed hopeless, and was only nursed 
in secret. But as the two friends rode to Weimar, there 
was no doubt much in Wolzogen's conversation that found 
an echo in Schiller's breast. An impression more deep, 
and yet more calm, than woman had hitherto made upon 
him, recalled to the poet, amidst the distractions of 
Weimar and the labour of his occupations, the image of 
the soft and pensive Charlotte. Fortune smiled upon the 
dawn of this affection. Charlotte came to Weimar 
that very winter, on a visit to Madame von Stein, a 
friend of her family, and Schiller met her in the 
society of the place, but not frequently. Still he con- 
trived to approach her, as nearly as his delicacy and the 
consciousness of his precarious worldly circumstances 
would allow to his pride. He supplied her occasionally 
with his favourite authors ; she undertook the commission 
to iind him a lodging at Rudolstadt for the summer. 
Occasion was thus found for the interchange of notes. On 
his part the correspondence was frank, but respectful ; it 
proclaimed friendship and esteem — it did not betray more. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 251 

" There breathes," in these letters, says an eloquent bio- 
grapher, u a noble, mild, discreet inclination, without a 
trace of passion ; " — and here the writer we qnote adds 
finely, " Our love is generally the effigy of the one we love. 
Schiller's present love was the gold, purified from the 
sensual passion which had mastered him at Dresden." 
It seems probable, however, that in neither was the 
memory of the previous love yet effaced : and this, while 
it served to invest their feeling for each other with a cer- 
tain tranquillity, allowed them both more sensibly to 
perceive the remarkable congeniality between their minds, 
tastes, and tempers. Thus, as it were, the soul began to 
love, before the heart was thoroughly moved. Schiller's 
fame, and his somewhat graver years, permitted him to 
assume with his young friend a certain tone of warning 
and advice. That court life, to which she seemed then 
destined, was opposed to all his ideas of true dignity and 
pure happiness. And, in the lines closing the second 
division of his poems, he expresses, in verse, the ideas often 
repeated in his correspondence.* 

In the midst of May, the following year, we find 
-j h-oo Schiller settled in the valley of Rudolstadt. 
He lodged in a house, haif-an-hour's walk from 
the town.j and his chamber overlooked the banks of the 
Saale, flowing through meadows, and under the shade of 
venerable trees. There, on the opposite side of the river 
rose a hill, clothed with woods, at the foot of which lay 
tranquil villages ; — there, high above the landscape, 
towered the castle of Rudolstadt. A small monument, 
crowned with a bronze copy of Dannecker's bust of 
Schiller, yet commemorates his sojourn in this happy 
valley, recalling Goethe's lovely words — 

" The place that a good man has trod, remains hallowed to all time." J 

It is thus that the elder sister speaks of those days — 
the fairest, perhaps, in the life of Schiller : — " How 
welcome was it, after some tedious visit, § to see our genial 
iriend approaching, beneath the fair trees that skirt the 

* Lines to a Female Friend, written in her Album. 

t In the village of Yolkstadt. j HofFineister. 

§ " Kafee- Visite "— Coffee- visit : we should say Tea-party. 



252 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

banks of the Saale ! A forest brook, that ponrs itself into 
that river, and was crossed by a little bridge, was the 
meeting-place at which we awaited. When we beheld him 
in the twilight, coming towards us, a serener, an ideal life 
entered within us ; a lofty earnestness, and the graceful 
ease of a mind pure and candid, ever animated Schiller's 
conversation. One seemed, as one heard him talk, to 
wander as it were between the immutable stars of heaven, 
and yet amidst the flowers of earth." 

But Schiller, during this holiday of existence, was 
not idle in that solemn vocation of Author — of In- 
structor — of High Priest in Literature — to which he 
was sworn* His evenings were devoted to Charlotte and 
her family, his mornings to study. Here he laboured at 
his " History of the Revolt of the Netherlands " — at the 
correction of the tale so well known in England, " The 
Ghost Seer," — here were concluded his " Letters upon 
Don Carlos " — and here was composed the first portion of 
the finest Poem written at this period of his life, " The 
Artists." In the house of the Lengefelds, Schiller too, for 
the first time, met Goethe, on his return from Italy. With 
the works of Schiller hitherto published, Goethe had no 
sympathy ; they contradicted his own theories of art, and 
they revolted his serene taste. His manner to the Suabian 
was reserved and cold ; the pride of Schiller forbade 
him to make the first advances ; and though, as he 
wrote word to his friend Korner, the great idea he 
had formed of Goethe was not lessened by this first 
personal contact, he doubted if they could ever come 
into close communication. " Much which is yet in- 
teresting to me — that which I yet wish and hope 
for — has had its epoch for him. His whole being 
is, from its origin, constructed differently from mine ; 
his world is not my world ; our modes of conceiving 
things are essentially different : from such a combina- 
tion, no secure substantial intimacy can result. Time 
will try." * 

About this time, at the instigation of the friendly 
and learned Wieland, Schiller turned his attention to 
the literature of Greece, with which he had hitherto 

* Correspondence with Korner : Carlyle's " Life of Schiller." 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 253 

but a very slight and superficial acquaintance. Nothing 
ever produces a more durable influence upon an author's 
genius, than the deliberate and systematic recurrence 
to Hellenic Poetry and Letters. Studied too early, they 
may often correct the taste at the expense of the fancy ; 
but, studied with the mature thought of manhood, they 
only strengthen by purifying the inventive faculties. 
From that time Schiller began to comprehend true art, 
the vivifier of nature. From that time he became an 
Artist. Homer first engrossed his reverent delight; he 
passed to the Greek Tragedians ; and the character of 
his mind, which inclined to philosophy, and the ten- 
dency of his genius, which was essentially pathetic and 
humane, rendered ample justice to the still wronged 
Euripides. * 

From these new sources of inspiration came his noble 
Poem on the " Gods of Greece," and the classical perfec- 
tion to which he brought " The Artists," before begun. 
The fonner of these Poems, which appeared in the 
"Mercury," superintended by Wieland, occasioned much 
offence to those who sought orthodoxy, even in the wildest 
dreams of the Poet. Although Schiller's mind at that 
time was certainly still unsettled, he yet grieved at an 
interpretation which he appears not to have foreseen ; and 
at a subsequent period, he sacrificed many of his most 
brilliant stanzas, in order to purify the whole from what- 
soever sincere and liberal piety could reasonably revolt at 
or regret. The remarkable frankness of his genius often, 
it is true, led him to depict or to imply his own struggles, 
and his own errors ; but, in his stormiest interval of 
doubt, Schiller never contemplated the dangerous and 
dark ambition of unsettling the religious convictions of 
others. 

Charlotte's admiration of " The Artists " greatly and 
seasonably served to cement the affection now ripening 
daily between them.f In fact, that fine poem no vulgar 
mind could really relish and admire. In one whom so 
elevated an appeal to the intellectual faculties could move 

* W r e must not, however, 'suppose that Schiller ever attained to the 
facility of a scholar in Greek. . . In translating Euripides, he had constant 
need of the Latin version, and even the French of Bruinoy. 

t Madame von AVolzogen. 



254 THE LIFE OF SCHILLEE. 

and animate, a lover might well behold the true com- 
panion of a poet's life, the true sympathiser in a poet's 
labours. 

This summer, otherwise so happy, was however dark- 
ened by the death of Madame von Wolzogen — Schiller's 
earliest protectress and second mother. He felt this afflic- 
tion most deeply — his letter to her son, stillextant, is 
full of tender grief and delicate consolation. 

In November, Schiller returned to Weimar, and 
occupied himself with the conclusion of his " Ghost 
Seer," and translations from Euripides. His chief re- 
laxation and luxury were in his letters to Charlotte — 
letters unequalled in their combination of manly tender- 
ness, confiding frankness, and refined yet unexaggerated 
romance ; still, though they now betrayed his own love, 
they did not formally hazard a declaration, or press for a 
return. 

But early in the following year he was called to a new 
1 ,_Q Q and more active career. Considerable portions 
i/by ' of his history of the " Revolt of the Nether- 
lands " had already appeared in Wieland's " Mercury," and 
excited considerable sensation. His friends wished to see 
him in one of those honourable situations, which, to the 
credit of Germany, afford shelter and independence to so 
numerous and brilliant a host of literary men. Goethe 
(though still not intimate with Schiller) displayed the 
calm magnanimity towards a rival natural to one in whom 
meanness was impossible, and employed the interest of his 
rank and his fame on behalf of the young historian. 
Mv -f- 30 Schiller was finally summoned to take the chair 
'of Historical Professor at the University of 
Jena. It was not without modest reluctance, and a sense 
of his own deficiences in the details of history, that he 
undertook this office. His reception was such as might be 
anticipated — Four hundred students crowded to the Lecture- 
room — their presence and applause animated him — and his 
voice, naturally not strong, filled the Hall. 

Amongst the German youth of this day, Schiller is the 
favourite; he was then, says Hoffmeister, u the idol." 
His very defects as a Lecturer were not those on which 
young men would be severe or discriminating critics. 
Through the fire and the vigour which animated his Ian- 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 255 

guage and his delivery, liis ardent listeners were not likely 
to detect that redundant rhetoric, in which genius is too 
apt to conceal deficient information. He came too fresh 
to his task. He was acquiring one day, the knowledge he 
imparted the next. His facts had not "been sufficiently 
meditated, nor his views sufficiently sobered down. 

The society of Jena was more congenial to Schiller than 
that of Weimar — here nothing was courtly and restrained ; 
here manners were diversified and opinions uncontrolled. 
To this illustrious University flocked the Professors and 
the Students from so many quarters, that each part of 
Germany found its representatives. The streets swarmed 
with all varieties of costume ; the halls resounded with all 
differences of dialect. From the coarsest manners to the 
most super-refined ; from the most limited information 
and the narrowest prejudice, to the profoundest wisdom — 
to the most liberal knowledge of the world ; all forms of 
intellect were here mixed and confounded. What a school 
for a man, who had yet to complete his education by the 
study of his kind — not in books, but in actual life ! The 
true poet must divide his existence between solitude and 
the crowd. 

Schiller's correspondence with Charlotte continued ; and 
his chivalrous devotion, the habitual intercourse with his 
noble and beautiful nature, had produced, at last, its full 
effect upon his young admirer. The old affection was 
effaced — the new affection confirmed. Charlotte owned to 
her sister, "that she had so lived in Schiller — he had so 
contributed to the formation of her mind, and to her 
happiness — that it seemed to her impossible to separate her 
lot from his." 

The sisters were now staying at Lauchstadt: thither 
Schiller (escaping from Jena) visited them ; a full explana- 
tion of what indeed must have been long since clear to 
both hearts, took place. Charlotte confessed that the love 
she had inspired was not unreturned, and promised, one 
day or other, to become his wife. True, as yet, it was 
hope deferred, — the fortunes of Schiller were still to be 
confirmed — the consent of Madame von Lengefeld still to 
be obtained. But it was enough for the present to feel 
that love was won. " How different," thus writes Schiller 
himself to Charlotte, on his return to Jena — " how different 



256 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

is all around mo now, since in each step of my life thine 
image meets me : like a halo thy love hovers over me ; like 
a fair mist does it clothe the face of Nature. I return 
from a walk : in the vast space of Nature, as in my lonely 
chamber, it is ever the selfsame atmosphere in which I 
move ; and the fairest landscape serves but for the fairer 
mirror of one ever-enduring image. The remembrance of 
thee leads me back to the All; the All reminds me, in 
turn, of thee. Never so freely and so boldly could I 
traverse, in my enthusiasm, through the world of Thought 
as now that my soul has found a possession — a home ; and 
no longer incurs the danger to lose itself in its wanderings : 
I know where again to find myself — in thee ! " 

At last came the long-yearned-for holidays. Schiller 
was released from his task ; he fled back to the neighbour- 
hood of Rudolstadt; he occupied his old chamber; he 
lived back his old life, — but in the brighter air of hope 
assured and of love returned. As yet, however, the lovers 
could only hold unwitnessed interviews by stealth ; and to 
this date we must refer the exquisite love poems of the 
" Mystery " and the " Assignation." At last, but not till 
after long and severe probation, Schiller's hopes were 
crowned. After the failure of various schemes and pro- 
jects, he obtained from the Duke of Saxe Weimar an ap- 
pointment as Professor Extraordinary, with a salary of 
200 rix dollars ; and he now boldly applied to Madame 
von Lengefeld for the hand of her daughter. His suit was 
supported with zeal and earnestness by Madame von Stein, 
who had great influence with Madame von Lengefeld, and 
by M. von Dalberg,* elder brother to the Superintendent 
of the Mannheim stage, a nobleman of the highest rank, 
and the most admirable character. Madame von Lengefeld 
was moved by these instances ; her prejudices gave way 
before the happiness of her daughter and the distinction of 
the suitor. 

The title of Hofrath, conferred on Schiller by the Court 
of Meiningen, in the beginning of 1790, perhaps served 

1 "7Q0 ^ more ^° con tent the good lady with her 

daughter's choice ; and on the 20th February, 

* Often confounded with Wolfgang; von Dalberg, the Mannheim Baron ; 
but an infinitely better person. It was to the elder brother that Schiller 
addressed the verses which accompanied the copy of " William Tell ; " not> 
as Mr. Carlyle supposes, to Wolfgang, who deserved no such honour. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 257 

1790, after an intimate acquaintance of three years, the 
lovers were united. 

Never was marriage, if we except only the narrowness 
of pecuniary circumstances, formed under more favourable 
auspices. The very age of the parties was that, in each, 
in which affection promises to be most durable, and the 
choice best considered. Schiller was about one-and-thirty, 
Charlotte about four-and -twenty : the length of the court- 
ship had but served to found attachment upon esteem, 
while it augmented it by delay. The characters of bride 
and bridegroom were in the, most perfect harmony ; where 
they differed, it was but for each to improve the other ; the 
refinement of the woman softened the impetuous man ; 
the noble fire of the man warmed and elevated the gentle 
woman. Schiller was now really formed for the home he 
had so long sighed for. With all that depth of feeling 
and singleness of heart which are common to those fond of 
solitude, he now combined much which intercourse with 
mankind alone can give. As all misanthropy had fled 
from his heart, so all cynicism was now banished from his 
manners and his dress. He could no longer have been 
open to the caricature of the Dresden actress ; and, inde- 
pendently of his fame, his genius, and his noble heart, a 
vainer woman than Charlotte von Lengefeld might have 
been proud of her choice. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

Schiller's illness — The sensation produced in Denmark by the report of his 
death. — The letter addressed to him by the Prince von Holstein Augus- 
tenburg, and Count von Schimmelmann — Schiller's reply — His study of 
Kant — Schiller revisits his native land. 

Schiller was not disappointed in the hopes he had 
formed of domestic happiness. A few months after his 
marriage he exclaims in his correspondence : " Life is quite 
a different thing by* the side of a beloved wife, than so 
forsaken and alone — even in summer. . . . The world 
again clothes itself around me in poetic forms ; old feel- 
ings are again awakening in my breast. . . . Pate has 
conquered the difficulties for me. Prom the future I ex- 
pect everything. ... I think my very youth will be re- 
newed, an inward poetic life will give it me again." * But, 
alas ! even as these lines were written, that bodily enemy 

., -Q-. for which the mind so rarely prepares itself was 

at hand. Disease struck root into a constitu- 
tion always delicate ; he was attacked with a disorder in 
the chest ; and though he recovered from its immediate 
severity, the head of the shaft was left behind. He never 
entirely recovered his health — from that time consumption 
rankled within. 

He had been labouring more intensely than ever : to 
such a man, the consciousness that on his toils rested the 
worldly comforts of a wife who had resigned a Court for 
a scholar's roof stimulated industry into fever. He was 
immersed in severe studies connected with the historical 
pursuits to which he was now devoted, but the first and 
most peremptory injunction of his physician was repose to 

his intellect Repose — and his very subsistence rested 

on activity ! At this crisis, however, one of those rare 
acts of munificence which are the god-like prerogatives of 
wealth, came to brighten poverty and comfort genius. A 
report of Schiller's death had been spread abroad : it had 

* Extracted from the translation in Carlyle's " Life," 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 259 

readied Denmark, at the moment when a princely circle of 
the Poet's admirers had resolved to repair to Hellebeck, 
near Copenhagen, and, amidst it sublime and enchanting 
scenery, to hold a court in his honour, and chant his 
" Hymn to Joy." Amongst these were the Danish Poet, 
Baggesen ; the Count Ernest von Schimmelmann ; the 
Prince Christian von Holstein Augustenburg and his Prin- 
cess. Their grief, as enthusiastic as their admiration, 
changed the meditated festivities into a funeral solemnity. 
They met at Hellebeck, on the shore of the sea, opposite 
the high rocks of Sweden, and Baggesen began to read 
the hymn. Clarinets, horns, and flutes chimed in to the 
song of the chorus ; two additional stanzas, in honour of 
the supposed dead, were chanted, and may be thus 
translated : — 

" Hail to a Mend, choir of friends ! 

The dead we love shall live once more ; 
Bright to the bowers of heaven ascends 
His soul : our lives it hovers o'er. 

Chorus. — Lift your attesting hands on high ; 

Swear by this wine from lands made free,* 
Till found once more in yonder sky, 
Faith t® our brother's memory." 

As the song ceased, all eyes wept. 

Homage to the dead is a vulgar and idle tribute, if it 
come after neglect or injury to the living. The heart 
sickens at that mockery of admiration, which allowed 
Spenser to die of a broken heart, and threw copies of 
verses into his grave, — which suffered political vengeance 
to reduce Dryden to a bookseller's drudge, and insisted on 
burying his dust in the sepulchre of kings. To Schiller's 
biographers belongs the pleasing task of commemorating 
the only true homage ever rendered to a dead poet, — 
simply because the poet was not dead ! No sooner was the 
report confuted, than the noble mourners exulted to ex- 
change ceremonial honours to the lifeless, for practical 
benefits to the living. A letter, from which we extract the 
purport, was sent to Schiller by the Prince von Augusten- 
burg and Count Schimmelmann. 

"27#AJVatvl791. 

"Two friends, united through the citizenship of the 

* i.e. French wine. 

s 2 



260 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER, 

world, send this letter to you — noble man! Both are un- 
known to you — both love you and revere. They find in 
your recent works the mind and the enthusiasm which knit 
the bond of their own friendship ; by the perusal of these 
works they accustom themselves to regard the author as a 
member of their own union. Great was their grief at the 
report of his death ; their tears were not the scantiest of 
those which flowed from all good men by whom he was 
known and loved. The lively interest with which you 
have inspired us must excuse us from the appearance of 
officious importunity. They tell us that your health 
suffers from too severe an application, and needs for some 
time an entire repose. This repose your pecuniary circum- 
stances alone forbid you to enjoy. Will you grudge us the 
delight of contributing to your relief ? We entreat you 
to receive, for three years, an annual gift of a thousand 
dollars.' ' * The writers proceed with dignity to touch 
upon their rank, and to imply a delicate hope that it may 
not prove an obstacle to their request ; they desire not to 
wound his spirit of independence, or parade the ostenta- 
tion of patronage. " We know no pride but this, — to be 
men! — citizens in that great Republic whose boundaries 
extend beyond single generations — beyond the limits of 
earth itself." They proceed to invite him into Denmark: 
" For we are not the only ones here who know and love 
you; and if, after the restoration of your health, you 
desire to enter into the service of our state, it would be 
easy for us to gratify such an inclination. Yet think us 
not so selfish as to make such a change in your residence a 
condition : we leave our suggestion to your free choice ; 
we desire to preserve to Humanity its instructor, and to 
this desire every other consideration is subordinate." 

There may be in this letter — which the gratitude of 
Literature should render no less imperishable than the 
works of him to whom it is addressed — something of the 
romantic exaggeration, in tone and phrase, which betrays 
the influence of the French cosmopolites ; but that in- 
fluence here affected men of noble hearts, who desired to 
have an excuse in philanthropy for individual beneficence ; 
not, as with the maudlin confraternities of France, an 

* A sum which, at "Weimar, would go perhaps three times as far as it 

would in England i 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 261 

excuse, in the citizenship of the world, from doing good to 
a single creature ! 

The effect such a letter produced on Schiller no one can 
describe — every one can imagine. Nothing but the decla- 
ration of his physicians that a visit to so northern a 
climate would be fatal, prevented him from hurrying to 
benefactors so delicate and so munificent. In a letter to 
Baggesen, the depth and manliness of his gratitude are 
apparent ; and this letter is the more interesting, inasmuch 
as it expresses those views of the dignity of letters, and 
that repugnance to regard art as a livelihood, which may 
serve the ambition of youthful genius at once with warning 
and emulation. 

"Frorn the cradle of my intellect till now," writes 
Schiller, " have I struggled with Fate ; and since I knew 
how to prize intellectual liberty, I have been condemned to 
want it. A rash step, ten years since, divided me from 
every other practical livelihood, but that of a writer. I 
had given myself to this calling before I had made proof 
of its demands, or surveyed its difficulties. The necessity 
of pursuing it befel me before I was fitted for it by know- 
ledge and intellectual maturity. That I felt this — that I 
did not bound my ideal of an author's duty to those narrow 
limits within which I was confined — I recognise as a favour 
of Heaven. As unripe, and far below that ideal which 
lived within me, I beheld all which I gave to the world." 
With feeling and with modesty Schiller proceeded to 
enlarge upon the conflict between his circumstances and 
his aspirations, to touch upon the melancholy with which 
he was saddened by the contemplation of the great master- 
pieces of art, ripened only to their perfection by that 
happy leisure denied to him. "What had I not given," 
he exclaims, "for two or three tranquil years; that, free 
from all the toils of an author, I could render myself only 
to the study, the cultivation of my conception, — the ripen- 
ing of my ideal ! " He proceeds to observe that in the 
German literary world, a man could not unite the labour 
for subsistence with fitting obedience to the demands of 
lofty art; that for ten years he had struggled to unite 
both ; and that the attempt to make the union only in 
some measure possible, had cost him his health . ..." In 
a moment when life began to display its whole value — 



262 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

when I was about to knit a gentle and eternal bond 
between the reason and the phantasy — when I girded 
myself to a new enterprise in the service of art, death 
drew near. This danger indeed passed away ; but I waked 
only to an altered life, to renew, with slackened strength 
and diminished hopes, my war with Fate. So the letter 
received from Denmark found me ! I attain at last the 
intellectual liberty so long and so eagerly desired. I win 
leisure, and through leisure I may perhaps recover my 
lost health ; if not, at least for the future, the trouble of 
my mind will not give nourishment to disease. If my lot 
does not permit me to confer beneficence in the same man- 
ner as my benefactors, at least I will seek it where alone it 
is in my power, — and make that seed which they scatter, 
unfold itself in me, to a fairer blossom for humanity." 
And he did so ! 

Thus enabled to enrich while he relaxed his mind, 
Schiller devoted himself with ardour to the study of 
Kant.* With the closer knowledge of this philosopher — 
who, whatever his defects, certainly did more than any 
other reasoner to counteract the hard and narrow scepti- 
cism of the French Encyclopedists, — to bring imagination 
to the aid of Faith, and at once to enlarge the tolerance 
of the sectarian and to calm the doubts of the seeker — 
really commences the Third Period of Schiller's intellectual 
career, though his biographers postpone its date to the 
time when its fruits became practically apparent. 

In June, 1792, Schiller and his wife visited Korner at 
1 jqp Dresden : On their return, they received Schil- 

ler's mother and youngest sister, Nannette, 
whom he had not seen for eight years. The tender associ- 
ations thus revived led the mind of the exile back to his 
Suabian home. In August, 1793, the Schillers, therefore, 
commenced an excursion to the Poet's father-land. f At 

* Conz, Professor of Poetry and Eloquence at Tubingen, who visited 
Schiller in 1792, says that he was then thoroughly absorbed in Kant. Conz 
gives a charming picture of Schiller's simple and frugal life. "He was," 
says the Professor, " Humanity itself, and his excellent wife a pattern of 
complaisance and modesty." 

f About this time Schiller's sister-in-law, according to the German law, 
annulled her marriage with M. von Beulwitz. She afterwards married 
"Wilhelm von AYolzogen, attached to her, as we have before said, from his 
earliest youth. She also joined the Schillers at Heilbronn. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 263 

Heidelberg, Schiller met once more the object of his early 
love, Margaret Sclrwan, now like himself married to 
another ; he saw her with a deep emotion, which his wife 
comprehended too well to resent ; he who sees, unmoved, 
the one in whom he formerly garnered up his hopes of 
home, can never constitute the happiness of the home he 
has found with another. 

At Heilbronn, unsurpassed, even in Germany, for the 
peculiar beauties of its landscape, the family of -. *qo 
Schiller met the long-lost wanderer. He stood 
amongst them no longer a rude stripling, a penniless exile ; 
— but the favourite of princes, the idol of a people — his 
hopes fulfilled — his destiny assured ; crowned already with 
renown, and calm in the certainty of triumphs more 
splendid yet to come. He had reached the time when, 
without humiliation, he could humble himself to his native 
sovereign. With Schiller's wild love for liberty, he never 
was without that loyalty, which is almost inborn with the 
children of the North. He wrote to the Duke of "Wurt em- 
berg such a letter as that loyalty might dictate ; he re- 
ceived no direct reply, but was informed, privately, " that 
the Duke would be ignorant of his movements if he re- 
entered Wiirtemberg." Schiller then repaired to Ludwigs- 
burg, where he was in the immediate neighbourhood of his 
father's house, and under the medical care of one of his 
early friends, von Hoven, now Court physician. ^ f 1 a 
Here he first enjoyed the happiness he had -t-qo ' 
long coveted ; he became a father. His earnest, 
manly, and affectionate nature was precisely that which 
finds children at once a charge and a blessing. Now he 
would play for the hour together with his " Gold-son, his 
heart's Karl," * as he named his firstborn ; now shut him- 
self up to study Quintilian, on the plan of education to be 
pursued. 

Those who remembered the youth of Schiller were 
startled by the charge which years and circumstance had 
effected ; all that was sharp and hard in his character was 
gone. His early fire was softened — it warmed more and 
alarmed less ; there was far greater grace in his demeanour. 
His ancient neglect of appearance and dress was replaced 

* Conz. Schwab. Hoffineister. 



264 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 



by a decent elegance ; his even humour scarcely allowed 
them to recognise the impetuous and stormy stripling they 
had known ten years before.* But, alas ! with the mental 
change had come the physical ; the features were drawn 
and hollow, the complexion wan and haggard. Illness 
frequently confined him to his bed — Kant and Homer his 
companions ; and at this time the grand outline of " Wallen- 
stein," before chalked out, began to receive colour and 
fullness ; he devoted himself to its composition principally 
at night, diversifying the poetical task with the first 
sketch of his " Philosophical Essay npon iEsthetical 
Cultivation. " 

During his residence at Ludwigsburg the Grand Duke 
Karl died.f Schiller was asked by his father to congratu- 
O f 24 ^ e ^ e -D^e's successor in a poem — we need 
ih'no ' scarcely say that he refused. He could not 
seem to rejoice at the death of a man who 
had been both his benefactor and his persecutor. Schiller 
was never more himself than when, standing by his 
sovereign's grave, with von Hoven, he spoke thus touch- 
ingly : — " Here rests this once active restless man ! He 
had great faults as a Prince, greater yet as an individual. 
But the first were overwhelmed by his high qualities, and 
the remembrance of the last must be buried with the dead. 
I say to thee, therefore, if thou hearest one speak of him 
disparagingly, as he lies there — trust that man not ! — he is 
no good, at least, he is no noble man," At Ludwigsburg 
he formed an acquaintance with Cotta the bookseller, 
which had considerable influence on his later labours. 
In connection with this publisher, a new literary periodical, 
the " Horen," was chalked out, and a new political 
journal, intended to take the lead over all its German 
contemporaries. Of this last Schiller proposed to assume 
the editorship ; but his growing disinclination for objects 
less noble than the art of which Philosophy had brought 

* Yon Hoven, ap. Mad. von Wolzogen. 

f Biographers have raised a doubt if Schiller had removed from Heil- 
bronn to Ludwigsburg before the Duke's death. But it seems quite clear 
that he was at Ludwigsburg early in September, since von Hoven, who 
resided at Ludwigsburg, attended his wife in her confinement, — Sept. 
14th. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 265 

liini clearer, and sublimer views, induced him happily 
to resign this notion. The political journal was, how- 
ever, set up by the publisher, and exists to-day in high 
repute, under the well-known name of the " Allgemeine 
Zeitung." 



CHAPTEE X. 



THIRD PERIOD. 



The Horen and Musenalmanach — Two deaths in Schiller's family — Return 
from philosophy to poetry — The summer-house — Influence of Goethe on 
Schiller's genius— Appearance of Wallenstein. 

In May, 1794, Schiller returned to Jena, his body 
•worn to a shadow ; # his mind more than ever vigorous 
and resolved. Here he found the charm of a friendship 
more complete, and more sympathetic alike in intellect and 
in taste, than he had yet known. Wilhelm von Humboldt 
had settled at Jena, with a charming wife, whom he had 
lately married ; — the two families contracted the closest 
intimacy. The undertaking of the " Horen " was now 
seriously commenced, as a monthly Periodical, with the 
assistance of the greatest names in Germany, — Goethe, 
Herder, Jacobi, Matthisson, &c. In this journal Schiller 
desired to consummate an idea which had long haunted 
him, and which had been but imperfectly developed in the 
"Thalia." It may be said that this idea had grown out 
of the vast and luminous humanity of Herder, and ripened 
under the influence to which Herder was most opposed — 
that of Kant. The journal was intended to merge all that 
belonged to sect, to party, and the day, and devote itself 
to all that could interest the common family of man ; so 
far, this was akin to Herder ; but Schiller sought the 
interest, not in broad and popular topics, but in that 
SBsthetical cultivation — that development of ideal beauty, 
which, since his study of Kant, he regarded as the flower 
and apex of human accomplishment. But the enterprise 
of this periodical, memorable in much, is so principally on 
account of the union it established between Goethe f and 
Schiller — an union inestimable to both, and therefore to 

* Goethe thought, on seeing Schiller, that he had scarcely a fortnight's 
life in him. — Hoffmeister. Eckermann. 

f "We need scarcely say that Goethe's fame and position had prodigiously 
increased since the publication of Schiller's "Bobbers." 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 267 

the world. Hitherto, these eminent men had moved in 
separate orbits ; and Goethe's calm kindness to his great 
rival had not advanced to intimacy ; but now the friend- 
ship Goethe felt for Schiller's wife, whom he had known 
from her childhood ; the ties formed by acqnaintances in 
common ; and that power of attracting others to his de- 
signs, which Goethe himself has remarked in Schiller ; 
drew them closely together, and served to form a bond 
which death only could dissolve. Goethe says, with noble 
candour, in his correspondence, " I really know not 
what might have become of me, without the impulse 
received from Schiller ; " — and he proceeds to enumerate 
the writings which had never been produced but for the 
co-operation of the only man from whom — had Goethe 
been one fraction less than Goethe — he would have been 
kept aloof by jealousy and alarm. Into this journal 
Schiller, appointed chief editor, poured some of the finest 
thoughts to be found in his prose writings ; embodied in 
the form of philosophical criticism. Here too, and in the 
"Musenalnianach," an annual publication, also undertaken 
in conjunction with Goethe, somewhat later, appeared the 
immortal lyrics, which perhaps established the most 
popular and indisputable of Schiller's claims to admira- 
tion, purely and singly as the Poet. In this last 
periodical finally flashed forth those Epigrams, under the 
name of Xenien ; sometimes personal and caustic, some- 
times thoughtful and ideal, which set the literary world of 
Germany in a blaze. The connection between Goethe and 
Schiller had excited much jealous hostility amongst many 
lesser writers ; an hostility wreaked upon the " Horen," 
and avenged in the " ATusenalmanach "' by these laconic 
sarcasms. The sensation they excited was prodigious ; 
though they can inspire but a lukewarm interest in 
the public of a foreign country. # Many of the more 
personal epigrams Schiller had the grace to withdraw 
from the subsequent collection of his poems; and in 

* Nevertheless, their effect upon German literature yet endures. Mr. 
Carlyle observes — ("Miscellanies," vol. i. p. 67) — that "the war of all the 
few good heads in the nation with all the many bad ones, began in Schiller's 
Musenalmanach for 1767; " and adds that, " since the age of Luther, there 
has scarcely been seen such strife and stir in the intellect of Europe." Wo 
do not quite subscribe to Mr. Carlyle' s admiration for "the new critical 
doctrine,' ' which dates from the Xenien. 



268 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

tliis withdrawal lie could afford to sacrifice what critics 
have termed his best. In the midst of these labours 

-|hq~ he had the misfortune to lose his youngest 
sister, Nannette, a girl of promise and beauty; 
and in the same year, after a lingering disease, his father. 
He felt both losses acutely ; the last perhaps the most : 
but in his letters it pleases us to see the philosopher 
return to the old childlike faith in God, the reliance on 
Divine goodness for support in grief, the trust in Divine 
mercy for the life to come. For it has been remarked 
with justice that, while Schiller's reason is often troubled 
in regard to the fundamental truths of religion, his 
heart is always clear. The moment death strikes upon 
his affections, tho phraseology of the schools vanishes 
from his lips — its cavils and scruples from his mind : 
and he comforts himself and his fellow-mourners with 
the simple lessons of Gospel resignation and Gospel 
hope. 

About this period Schiller began to turn wearily from 
the studies which had for years occupied his intellect and 
influenced his genius. He felt that he had given himself 
too much to abstract speculation, too little to the free 
poetic impulse. " It is high time, ,, he says, in a letter to 
Goethe, " that for a while I should close the Philosophy 
Shop." He returned with ardour to the grand outline of 
his " WallensteiH," commenced years ago ; long suspended, 
never forgotten. He yearned for some escape from the 
learned and arid atmosphere around him, some quiet 
retreat in which he could be alone with his genius — a 
summer-house with a garden ! At length, this modest 
desire which literally seemed to haunt him was realised. 
Not far from Jena, to the south-west of the town, he pur- 
chased a garden, and built himself a kind of pavilion, with 
a single chamber. The site commanded a wide and noble 
prospect. Placed on the brow of a hill, up which the 
garden climbed, the summer-house overlooked the valley 
of the Saale, and the hanging pines of a neighbouring 
forest.* "There," says Goethe, in his Prologue to the 
" Lay of the Bell "— 

* The house exists no more ; upon its site is placed an urn dedicated to 
the memory of the poet. — Doring. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 269 

" There, deck'd lie the fair garden watch-tower ; whence 
listening he loved the voice of stars to hear, 
Which to the no less ever-living sense 

Made music, mystic, yet through mystery clear ! " 

Here then, in the summer months, did he devote him- 
self, with a passion more fervent than in youth, to the 
divine faculty of creation. Often was the light seen at 
night streaming from the window, and the curious might 
even catch a glimpse of his tall shadowy figure walking 
to and fro the chamber ; now halting to write down the 
verses which he first declaimed aloud, or to support the 
overstrained physical power with the fatal excitements, for 
which our own Byron had more excuse, and has found less 
mercy. It was his custom to have placed on the table not 
only strong coffee and chocolate, but champagne, and the 
far more irritating and pernicious wines of the Rhine. 
Thus would he labour the night through, till sleep, or 
rather exhaustion, came on at morning ; and he never rose 
till late. Dearly purchased, indeed, was the luxury of 
these midnight watches ; but who shall conceive their 
intense delight ? Thus he speaks himself in his letter to 
Goethe, May, 1797, on his first occupation of his new 
abode : — " I greet you from my garden, on which I entered 
this day : a fair landscape surrounds me ; the sun goes 
gently down ; and the nightingales begin their warbles. 
All around serves to render me serene ; and my first 
evening in my own ground and soil is of the fairest 



omen 



! » 



It happened, perhaps fortunately, that, in the summer 
of 1797, Wilhelm von Humboldt left Jena for Italy. The 
influence that this eminent but over-refining intellect had 
exercised on Schiller, had not been on the whole favourable 
to his poetical genius ; * it had withdrawn him too much 
from the broad and popular field in which poetry, of the 
highest order and most extended empire, should seek its 
themes, into the " Realm of Shadow," — an obscure and 
metaphysical ideal. With the departure of Humboldt, a 
new and far happier direction was given to Schiller's eager 

* W. v. Humboldt, who was a devoted Kantian, seems to have supposed 
that poetry should be a riddle. It is always in the Abstract that he searches 
for the Beautiful. 



270 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

energies. More delivered to the luminous influence of 
Goethe, he became more imbued with his art. A 
friendly emulation with Goethe led to the production 
of Schiller's greatest, though simplest poetical produc- 
tions — his Ballads. Goethe had already shown what 
epic interest and what subtle wisdom might be given 
to this form of verse : Schiller caught the inspiration, 
and composed his " Diver," the sublimest ballad in the 
German language. This was followed by "The Glove," 
" The Cranes of Ibycus," &c, &c. The years 1797-98 
were signalised by these performances, in which the 
ripest art of Goethe seems united with the earliest force of 
Schiller. 

Meanwhile, " Wallenstein " still, though slowly ad- 
vanced to its elaborate completion. Schiller grudged no 
pains, and neglected no study, which might serve to fulfil 
in this great work, that ideal of excellence, for the 
achievement of which the necessary leisure had been so 
desired. He plunged into the recesses of astrology and 
consulted the dreams of the Cabalists, in order to treat 
with conscientious accuracy, and invest with solemn 
dignity, the favourite superstition of his hero.* Finally, 
in January, 1799, after great preparation, the first portion 
i ^qq °^ " Wallenstein/' the " Piccolomini," was pro- 

Tj-,, , \ A duced at Weimar. This was followed by the 
^tat. 4U. « Death of Wallenste i n) >> ^ April. If on the 

boards the interest of these several parts of the great 
whole was not so intense as Schiller's earlier dramas, he 
was fortunate in the cordial support of the few who ulti- 
mately decide the judgment of the many : the perusal of 
the work, subsequently published entire, served to deepen 
and to widen general admiration : the more " Wallenstein" 
was examined and discussed, the more its profound beauty 
grew upon the world. Long after its publication, Goethe 
compared it to a wine, which wins upon the taste in pro- 
portion to its age. "This work," says Tieck, " at once 
rich and profound, is a monument for all times, of which 

* Schiller was fond, for their own sake, of such ultra-philosophical 
inquiries. When at Heilbronn, 1793, he took much interest in animal 
magnetism. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 271 

Germany may be proud ; and a national feeling — a native 
sentiment — is reflected from tins pure mirror, teaching us 
a greater sense of what we are, and what we were." In 
fact, from that time Schiller became the National Poet of 
all Germany. 



CHAPTEE XL 

Residence at "Weimar— Mary Stuart — Maid of Orleans -Bride of Messina- 
Reception at the Leipsic Theatre — Death of Schiller's mother — His life 
and habits — He is ennobled — Acquaintance with Madame de Stael. 

In the same year, 1799, by tlie advice of his physi- 
cians, Schiller removed to Weimar ; the Grand Duke 
awarded him a pension, of 1000 dollars, with a declara- 
tion that it should be doubled if illness should interfere 
with his other resources. His pecuniary circumstances 
were now competent to his moderate wants. "Wallen- 
stein " had brought him ample remuneration ; the pe- 
riodicals with which he was connected yielded a regular 
and liberal income. Nevertheless, his activity increased 
as the ruder necessities for exertion were diminished. 
Vast schemes were constantly before him. His genius 
itself became to him that spur which Poverty is to the 
genius of less earnest men. His play of "Maria Stuart," 
and " The Lay of the Bell," long premeditated, were his 
next productions; the last the greatest of his lyrics ; the 
first the poorest of the dramas conceived in his riper years. 
To an Englishman nothing can be less satisfactory than 
Schiller's character of our great Elizabeth ; and history is 
violated for insufficient causes, and from an indistinct and 
imperfect ideal. Madame de Stael thought more highly 
of the tragedy than it deserved, precisely because of its 
defects. The Mary and the Elizabeth of Schiller have 
much of the shallowness and the tinsel of French heroines.* 
The public for once judged accurately in admiring the 
scattered beauties of the piece, and condemning it as a 
whole. But sickness of body may perhaps have conduced 
to the faults of this play. After Schiller's death, this 
note, in his handwriting, was found : " The year 1800 I 
was very ill. Amidst pain was ' Mary Stuart ' completed." 

* A. W. Sehlegel, nevertheless, preferred, or affected to prefer, in many- 
important respects, the " Maria Stuart " to the " Wallenstein." 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 273 

But from this single fall Schiller's genius recovered itself 
with tbe bound of a Titan. The lovely image of the 
" Maid of Orleans " haunted him. Already, with the com- 
mencement of the new year, 1801, three acts of this 
masterpiece of elevated romance were composed. In the 
autumn of the same year, during a visit to his friend 
Korner at Dresden, he laboured at the no less magnificent 
" Bride of Messina," unequalled as a lyrical tragedy. 
From Dresden he went to Leipsic, and was present at the 
performance of the " Maid of Orleans." Here one of those 
signal triumphs, which so rarely await living genius, 
awaited him. Scarce had the drop-scene fallen on the 
first act, than the house resounded with the cry, " JEs 
lebe Friedrich Schiller ! " The cry was swelled by all 
the force of the orchestra. After the performance the 
whole crowd collected in the broad place before the 
theatre to behold the Poet. Every head was bared as 
he passed along ; while men lifted their children in their 
arms, to show the pride of Germany to the new generation 
— crying out, " Dieser 1st es " — " That is he ! " 

From Leipsic Schiller returned to Weimar, where 
"The Maid of Orleans " soon found its way to the boards ■; 
but its most gorgeous representation was at Berlin, 
where the New Theatre commenced with its performance 
on a scale of grandeur unprecedented on the German 
stage. 

Schiller and Goethe were now almost inseparable. 
Together they directed the management of the Weimar 
Theatre, in which Schiller still entertained ideas of dra- 
matic dignity too lofty for the social life of the moderns. 
Still did his manhood desire that for which his boyhood 
had been destined — the vocation of the Preacher ; — and 
the stage still but suggested to him the office of the pulpit. 
"The pulpit and the stage are the only places for us," 
said he. He loved the Theatre ; it was the sole public 
entertainment he habitually frequented. He was fond of 
the society of actors. He used to invite them to supper 
at the Stadthause, after the first, or even a more than 
usually successful, performance of one of his pieces. But 
generally, on returning from the Theatre, his mind was 
excited, and his emulation fired. And the midnight 
lamp at Weimar, as at Jena, attested that prodigious 

T 



274 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

energy, which no infirmity slackened, and no glory could 
appease. 

At this time he purchased a small house on the Espla- 
nade — associated indeed with melancholy auspices : the 
same day he entered it his mother died. He felt in this 
affliction the rupture of the last tie of youth. He wrote to 
his sister — " Ah, dear Sister, so both the beloved Parents 
are gone from us, and the oldest bond that fastened us to 
life is rent ! let us, we three (including his other sister), 
alone surviving of our father's house, let us cling yet closer 
to each other ; forget not that thou hast a loving brother. 
I remember vividly the days of our youth when we were 
all in all to each other. From that early existence our 
fate has divided us ; but attachment — confidence, remain 
unchanged — unchangeable." 

In his own circle lay his purest and best comfort. He 
loved to associate himself with the infant sports of his 
children. Many a time was he found with his boy playing * 
on the floor. Around him were assembled such friends as 
Genius rarely finds — men dear alike to his heart, and 
worthy of his intellect. At the Court he was grown familiar, 
and, though he frequented it less than his royal friends 
desired, it was no longer made displeasing to his tastes by 
the reserve of his earlier pride. 

To his intellectual life Groethe had grown necessary, — 
w T hile his more household friends were his old College ac- 
quaintance, Wilhelm von Wolzogen, and "Wolzogen's wife, 
—the eloquent and enthusiastic sister of his own. But, 
withal, his passion for solitary w r anderings was unabated. 
Often was he seen in the lonely walks of the Park, stopping 
abruptly to note down his thoughts in his tablets ; often 
seated amidst the gloomy beeches and cypresses that clothe 
the crags, leading towards the Royal Pleasure House 
(the Romische Haus), and listening to the murmur of the 
neighbouring brook. 

In 1802 he received from the Emperor of Austria a 
patent of nobility ; it was obtained through the unsolicited 
influence of the Duke of Weimar. He esteemed the 
honour at its just price — not with the vulgar scorn of the 
would-be cynic, still less with the elation of a vain convert 
from Republicanism. It pleased " Lolo and the children," 

* At the game called " Lion and Dog," on all fours. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 275 

In the following year Madame de Stael visited 
Weimar, where her nneqnalled powers of conversation 
were more appreciated than in London. She herself 
has, in her " Alleroagne," given ns an interesting sketch 
of Schiller. He seems at first to have been more 
startled with the readiness of her powers, than charmed 
with their brilliancy, or penetrated with their depth. 
He says of her, not withont justice, that her " Naturel 
and her feeling were better than her metaphysics." He 
is not qnite pleased with that French clearness of under- 
standing that made her averse to the Ideal Philosophy, 
which she believed led only to mysticism and supersti- 
tion. He asserts somewhat too positively, " for what 
we call Poetry, she has no sense." He complains that 
" she can appreciate only in snch works, the passionate, 
the rhetorical, the nniversal or popular. She does not 
prize the false, but she does not always recognise the true." 

In a subsequent letter to his sister, Schiller appears to 
have found the illustrious Frenchwoman improved upon 
acquaintance, for he there expresses his admiration with 
more cordiality and less reserve. He now finds her a 
Phenomenon in her sex — for esprit and eloquence equalled 
but by few men — uniting with all the delicacy or finesse, 
obtained by intercourse with the great world, that rare 
earnestness and depth of mind obtained by most only 
through solitude.* In truth, whatever were the errors 
of Madame de Stael, there was in her character and 
her genius, a genuine nobleness akin to Schiller's ; and 
though much of her fame, founded on her conversational 
eloquence, passed away with herself, her works still 
attest that union of imagination with intellect — enthu- 
siasm with sense, which is never found but in minds of 
a great order, and in hearts which may indeed be misled 
by passion, but in which honesty and goodness are as 
instincts. 

* In the sixth volume of the " Correspondence "between Goethe and 
Schiller/ * and in Goethe's own " Tag-und Jahres-Heft," we may neverthe- 
less perceive that Madame de Stael was to both these illustrious Germans 
somewhat too oppressively brilliant and loquacious — somewhat approaching 
occasionally to that social infliction for which we have no phrase so expres- 
sive as that which one of our most eminent Englishmen somewhat bluntly 
applied to her : — " The cleverest woman in the world for such a bore, and 
the greatest bore in the world for so clever a woman." 

T 2 



CHAPTER XII. 

" Wilhelm Tell "— Ill-health— Last sickness— Death— Burial. 

And now, in that mysterious circle in which the life of 
genius so frequently appears to move, Schiller, nearing the 
close of his career, returned to the inspirations with which 
it had commenced. His first rude Drama had burned with 
the wild and half-delirious fever of Liberty ; — Liberty, 
purified and made rational, gave theme and substance to 
his last. The euthanasia of the genius which had com- 
posed " The Robbers," was the " Wilhelm Tell." Goethe 
has observed, indeed, that, although the idea of freedom 
runs through all the works of Schiller, the earlier em- 
bodied the physical freedom, the later the ideal. But this 
cannot fairly be regarded as the distinction between " The 
Robbers " and "Wilhelm Tell." It is no ideal liberty for 
which the simple mountaineers, whom Schiller has drawn 
in outlines so large and muscular, aspire and struggle ; it 
is physical, practical, homely liberty — liberty of life and 
soil. It is this very practicability which really divides the 
" Tell " from " The Robbers : " in the last heaves the per- 
turbed sigh for a social revolution, — for some liberty 
contrary to all the forms and the very substance of the 
organised world ; it is an unreasoning passion that would 
risk a chaos for the chance that again may go forth 
the words— " Let there be light!" But in "Tell" the 
idea of liberty, intense and visible in itself, is yet cir- 
cumscribed to the narrowest possible boundaries; it is 
but the struggle of an honest and universal people for 
independence, without one whisper of ambition, without 
one desire of revenge : it is a revolution portrayed in an 
anti-revolutionary spirit; throughout the whole breathes 
the condemnation of the French anarchy ; it is an 
evoking of the true Florimel, that, beside her living 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 277 

and human Beauty, the false Florimel may dissolve into 
snow.* 

In the spring of 1804 Schiller visited Berlin, at which 
city he was received with signal honours ; in July we find 
him at Jena, where, while his wife was happily confined of 
her youngest daughter, his constitution was severely 
shaken by a feverish cold. He suffered much and fre- 
quently during the rest of the year, but his mental activity 
was undiminished : besides some of his minor poems, such 
as 4i The Alp Hunter," and " The Lay of the Hill," he 
was employed on a translation of Racine's "Phedre," 
and the outline of the tragedy of " Demetrius," never 
completed. 

He also, about this time or very little later, conceived 
the scheme of a Drama which, if suitably executed, would 
have been, perhaps, the most extraordinary of all his 
various compositions. The subject was to be the French 
Police — and the plot to have embraced all the evils and 
abuses of modern civilization. Such a work would indeed 
be of wide compass and noble uses, but it seems to require 
the space of a prose fiction, and it is difficult to compre- 
hend how it could have been contracted into the limits, 
and expressed in the form, of a Poetical Drama. It is 
noticeable, that the singular sympathy witli mankind 
which Schiller possessed, often makes him the father of 
ideas in others with whom no direct communication can be 
traced, — the seeds that spring up so lavishly in his humane 
intellect are dispersed by invisible winds to grow on every 
soil. This idea of depicting, by literary portraiture, the 
social ills of Civilization and France, is the main stock of 
more than half the French writers of our own day. — In 
Balzac, in Sand, in Sue, in Souvestre, living in the 
midst of the great whirlpool — are heard the echoes of 
the Thought which was only breathed inaudibly within 
the heart of the Poet-student of the tranquil Weimar. 
And with these recurrences to the peculiar inspirations of 
his youth, the desire of travel returned prophetically to 
one about to depart for ever from all earthly homes. He 
traced routes upon the chart, and spoke of plans and 
pilgrimages never to be realised. 

* See Schiller's own poem, entitled u William Tell," in which Ms object 
is briefly and simply explained. 



278 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

The reperusal of Herder's "Ideas on the History of 
Man" — to which (though he was often largely indebted 
to it) he did not before do justice 8 — seems also to have 
deepened his meditations npon Life, Nature, and Eternal 
Providence. "Christianity," he said to his gifted sister- 
in-law, " has stamped a new impression on Humanity, 
while it revealed a sublimer prospect to the soul." Accord- 
ing to this witness, Madame von Wolzogen — the best, for 
the most household, evidence — his faith increased as his 
life drew nearer to its goal. 

At length, after many preparatory warnings — visitings, 
a .-■ under the name of catarrhal fever, of his con- 
180^' stitutional pulmonary disease — Schiller was 
stricken with his last illness on the 28th of 
April, 1805 ; Goethe, who was just recovering from a dan- 
gerous illness, called on Schiller, whom he found leaving 
his house for the theatre. He was too unwell to accom- 
pany, too polished to detain him, — they parted for the last 
time at the threshold of Schiller's door. At the close of 
the performance Schiller felt himself seized with a feverish 
attack. A young friend, Henry Voss (son of the cele- 
brated author of " Luise," &c.,), led him home. On 
calling the next morning, Voss found him stretched on the 
sofa between sleep and waking. "Here I lie again ! "he 
said in a hollow voice. As yet, however, he had no con- 
ception of his danger ; he thought to have discovered a 
treatment to ensure his recovery. His mind for some days 
continued clear, and the chief regret he expressed was for 
the interruption to " Demetrius." But on the 6th of May 
he began to wander : on that day Voss, visiting him again, 
observed that his eyes were deep sunken ; every nerve 
twitched convulsively : they brought him some lemons, at 
which he caught eagerly, but laid them down again with a 
feeble hand. Delirium came on : he raved of soldiers and 
war ; the word Lichtenberg, or Leuchtenburg (the former 
the name of an author whom he had been lately reading, 
the latter of a castle which he had long desired to visit), 

* He said to Madame von "Wolzogen, "I know not how it is, but this 
Book speaks to me after quite a new fashion." Herder and Schiller were 
not very familiarly intimate — they were too like each other for cordial con- 
currence. Both were essentially earnest, and therefore the differences 
between them resisted compromise. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 279 

came often to his lips. On the evening of the 7th, his 
mind recovered ; he wished to renew his customary con- 
versations with his sister-in-law upon the proper theme 
and aims of tragedy ; she prayed him to keep quiet ; he 
answered, touchingly — " True ; now, when no one under- 
stands me, and I no more understand myself, it is better 
that I should be silent." Shortly before, he had concluded 
some talk on death with these striking words : " Death 
can be no evil, for it is universal." And now the thought 
of eternity seems to have occupied his mind in its dreams ,• 
for in sleep he exclaimed, " Is that your hell £ — is that 
your heaven ? " He then raised his looks, and a soft 
smile came over his face. It was, perhaps, on awaking 
from this sleep that he used those memorable words — 
" Now is life so clear! — so much is made clear and 
plain ! " 

In the evening he took some broth, . and said to his 
friends that " he thought that night to sleep well, with 
God's will." His faithful servant, who watched him, said 
that, during the night, he recited many lines from "Deme- 
trius," and once he called on God to preserve him from a 
long and tedious death-bed. 

On the morning of the 8th of May he woke up com- 
posed, and asked for his youngest child. She was brought 
to him. He took the infant's hand in his own. and gazed 
at her long with a look of unspeakable sorrow. He then 
began to weep bitterly, kissed the young face with emotion, 
and beckoned to them to remove the child. 

Towards the evening his sister-in-law approached his 
bed, and asked how he felt. ' ; Better and better, calmer 
and calmer," was his answer. He then longed once more 
to see the sun ; they drew aside the curtains ; he looked 
serenely on the setting light. Nature received his 
farewell. 

His sleep that night was disturbed ; his mind again 
wandered ; with the morning he had lost consciousness. 
He spoke incoherently, and chiefly in Latin. His last 
drink was champagne. Towards three in the afternoon 
came on the last exhaustion; the breath began to fail. 
Towards four, he would have called for naphtha, but the 
last syllable died on his lips ; — finding himself speechless, 
he motioned that he wished to write something ; but his 



280 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

hand could trace only three letters, in which was yet recog- 
nisable the distinct character of his writing. His wife 
knelt by his side ; he pressed her hand. His sister-in-law 
stood with the physician at the foot of the bed, applying 
warm cushions to the cold feet. Suddenly a sort of electric 
shock came over his countenance ; the head fell back ; the 
deepest calm settled on his face. His features were as 
those of one in a soft sleep. 

The news of Schiller's death soon spread through 
Weimar. The theatre was closed ; men gathered together 
in groups. Each felt as if he had lost his dearest friend. 
To Goethe, enfeebled himself by long illness, and again 
stricken by some relapse, no one had the courage to men- 
tion the death of his beloved rival. When the tidings 
came to Henry Meyer, who was with him, Meyer left the 
house abruptly, lest his grief might escape him. No one 
else had the courage to break the intelligence. Goethe 
perceived that the members of his household seemed em- 
barrassed, and anxious to avoid him. He divined some- 
thing of the fact, and said, at last, " I see, — Schiller must 
be very ill." That night they overheard him — the serene 
man, who seemed almost above human affection, who dis- 
dained to reveal to others whatever grief he felt when his 
son died — they overheard Goethe weep ! In the morning 
he said to a friend, "Is it not true that Schiller was very 
ill yesterday ? " The friend (it was a woman) sobbed. 
"He is dead," said Goethe faintly. "You have said it," 
was the answer. " He is dead ! " repeated Goethe, and 
covered his eyes with his hands. 

The body was dissected ; and it was some consolation 
to the mourners to know that much prolongation of life 
would have been beyond the art of medicine ; the left lung 
was destroyed, the ventricles of the heart wasted, the 
liver indurated, the gall-bladder extremely swelled. A son 
of the great Herder, one of the physicians who examined 
the body, thought it impossible that, under any circum- 
stances, he could have lived half a year, nor that without 
great suffering. 

Schiller was buried in the night of the 11th of May ; 
twelve young men of good family bore the coffin ; the 
heavens were clouded, but the nightingales sang loud and 
full. As the train proceeded, the sound of a horse's hoofs 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLEE. 281 

was heard ; a rider dismounted and followed the proces- 
sion—it was Willi elm von TV r olzogen, who had heard the 
fatal news at Naumburg, and hastened to pay the last 
respect to the remains of his college friend. As the 
bier was lowered, the wind suddenly scattered the mists, 
the moon broke forth, and its light streamed upon the 
coffin. When all was over ? the skies were suddenly 
obscured a»;ain. 



CONCLUDING CHAPTER. 

CRITICAL SUMMARY. 

So, at the early age of forty-five, closed the earthly 
career of Friedrich Schiller. In this brief epitome of his 
life the reader will not fail to perceive the peculiar dis- 
tinctions of his character and mind : his singular ardour 
for Truth; his solemn conviction of the duties of a Poet; 
his prevailing idea, that the Minstrel should be the Preacher, 
— that Song is the sister of Religion in its largest sense, — 
that the Stage is the Pulpit to all sects, all nations, all 
time. ISTo author ever had more earnestness than Schiller, 
— his earnestness was the real secret of his greatness ; this 
combination of philosophy and poetry, this harmony be- 
tween genius and conscience, sprang out of the almost 
perfect, almost unrivalled equality of proportions which 
gave symmetry to his various faculties.^ With him the 
imagination and the intellect were so nicely balanced, that 
one knows not which was the greater ; owing, happily, to 
the extensive range of his studies, it may be said that, as the 
intellect was enriched, the imagination was strengthened. 
Unlike Goethe's poet in "Wilhelm Meister," he did not 
sing " as the bird sings," from the mere impulse of song, 
but he rather selected Poetry as the most perfect form for 
the expression of noble fancies and high thoughts. "His 
conscience was his Muse."t It was thus said of him with 
truth, "that his poetical excellence was of later growth 
than his intellectual;" and as the style of Lord Bacon 
ascended to its sonorous beauty in proportion as his mind 
became more stored, and his meaning more profound, so 

* Hence Mr. Carlyle well observes, ll Sometimes we suspect that it is the 
very grandeur of his general powers which prevents us from exclusively 
admiring his poetic genius. "We are not lulled by the siren song of poetry, 
because her melodies are blended with the clearer, manlier tone of serious 
reason, and of honest though exalted feeling." — Carlyle' s Life of Schiller, 

f " Sa conscience etoit sa Muse." — De fStael, 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 283 

the faculty of expression ripened -with. Schiller in exact 
ratio to the cultivation of his intellect. His earliest com- 
positions were written with difficulty and labour, and he 
was slow in acquiring thorough mastery over the gigantic 
elements of his language. Perhaps this very difficulty (for 
nothing is so fatal to the mental constitution as that verbal 
dysentery which we call facility) served both to increase 
his passion for his art, and to direct it to objects worthy 
the time and the care which, in his younger manhood, he 
was compelled to bestow upon his compositions. From 
this finely poised adjustment between the reasoning and 
the imaginative faculties, came the large range of his 
ambition, not confined to Poetry alone, but extending over 
the whole fields of Letters. We can little appreciate 
Schiller, if we regard him only as the author of " Wallen- 
stein," and the " Lay of the Bell ; " wherever the genius of 
his age was astir, we see the flight of his wing and the 
print of his fcotstep. While, in verse, he has made experi- 
ments in almost every combination, except the epic (and in 
that he at one time conceived aud sketched a noble out- 
line), embracing the drama, the ode, the elegy, the narrative, 
the didactic, the epigrammatic, and in each achieved a 
triumph, — in Prose, he has left monuments only less im- 
perishable in the various and rarely reconcilable lands of 
romance, of criticism, of high- wrought philosophical specu- 
lation, and impartial historical research. His romance of 
the " Ghost-Seer" is popular in every nation, and, if not 
perfect of its kind, the faults are those of a super-exuberant 
intellect, which often impedes, by too discursive a dialogue, 
the progress of the narrative, and the thread of the events. 
In this he resembled Godwin rather than Scott. If with 
"St. Leon" and "Caleb Williams" the "Ghost-Seer" 
rests in the second class of popularity, it is because, as 
with them, it requires a reflective mind to seize all its 
beauties, and yield to all its charms. 

In History, if Schiller did not attain to the highest rank, 
it was not because he wanted the greatest qualities of the 
historian, but because the subjects he selected did not 
admit of their full development. But while his works in 
that direction are amongst the most charming, impartial, 
and justly popular, of which his nation boasts, he has 
shown, in the introductory Lecture, delivered by himself 



284 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

at Jena, how grand his estimate of history was. His 
notions on history are worth whole libraries of history 
itself.* As a Philosophical Essayist, he is not perhaps 
very original (though in borrowing from Kant he adds 
much that may fairly be called his own), and rigid meta- 
physicians have complained of his vagueness and obscurity, f 
But his object was not that of severe and logical reasoning ; 
it was to exalt the art to which most of his essays were 
devoted ; to make the great and the pure popular ; to 
educate the populace up to purity and greatness. The 
ideal philosophy, as professed by Schiller, was, in fact, a 
kind of mental as well as moral Christianity, which was to 
penetrate the mind as well as the soul — extend to the arts 
of man as well as his creeds ; to make all nature a temple 
— all artists priests : Christianity in spirit and effect it was 
— for its main purpose was that of the Gospel faith, viz., 
to draw men out of this life into a purer and higher air of 
being — to wean from virtue the hopes of reward below — 
to make enjoyment consist in something beyond the senses. 
What holy meditation was to the saints of old, the ideal of 
^Esthetic art was to the creed of Schiller. Therefore, his 
philosophy, in strict accordance with his poetry, w^as de- 
signed not so much to convince as to ennoble ; — and, 
therefore, though in the wide compass of Schiller's works 
there are passages which would wound the sincere and un- 
questioning believer; though in his life there were times 
when he was overshadowed by the doubts that beset 
inquiry ; though, in the orthodox and narrower sense of 
the word Christian, it would be presumptuous to define his 
sect, or decide on his belief ; the whole scope and tendency 
of his works, taken one with the other, are, like his mind, 
eminently Christian. No German writer — no writer, not 
simply theological — has done more to increase, to widen, 
and to sanctify the reverent disposition that inclines to 
Faith. 



* Of this lecture— " What is universal History, and with what views 
should it be studied?" — Mr. Carlyle observes justly, "There perhaps has 
never been in Europe another course of history sketched out on principles 
so magnificent and philosophical." — Carlyle' s Life of Schiller. 

f Mr. Carlyle, however, estimates the logical precision of Schiller more 
highly than many of Schiller's own countrymen ; and speaks of the iEsthetic 
Letters as " one of the deepest, most compact pieces of reasoning he is 
anywhere acquainted with." — Miscell. p. 62. 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLEB. 285 

As Schiller's poetry was the flower of liis mind, so in his 
poetry are to be found, in their most blooming produce, all 
the faculties that led him to philosophy, criticism, and 
history. In his poetry are reflected all his manifold studies. 
Philosophy, criticism, and history pour their treasures into 
his verse. One of a mind so candid, and a life so studious, 
could not fail to be impressed by many and progressive 
influences. Schiller's career was one education, and its 
grades are strongly marked. Always essentially humane, 
with a heart that beat warmly for mankind, his first works 
betray the intemperate zeal and fervour of the Revolution 
which then in its fair outbreak misled not more the in- 
experience of youth than the sagacity of wisdom ; a zeal 
and fervour increased in Schiller by the formal oppression 
of academical tyranny ; * a nature unusually fiery and im- 
patient ; and a taste terribly perverted by the sentiment of 
Rousseau and the bombast of Klopstock. Friendship, love, 
indignation, poverty, and solitude, all served afterwards to 
enrich his mind with the recollection of strong passions 
and keen sufferings : and, thrown much upon himself, it is 
his own life and his own thoughts that he constantly re- 
produces on the stage. The perusal of Shakspeare has less 
visible and direct influence on his genius than he himself 
seems to suppose ; — the study of History has far more. From 
the period in which he steadily investigated the past, his 
characters become more actual ; his Humanity more rational 
and serene. He outgrows Rousseau ; the revolutionary 
spirit fades gradually from his mind ; he views the vast 
chronicle of man not with the fervour of a boy, but the 
calm of a statesman. At this time he begins to deserve the 
epithet Goethe has emphatically bestowed on him — he be- 
comes "practical " But with the study of history comes the 
crisis of doubt, the period of his scepticism and his anguish. 
From this influence he emerged into the purer air, which 
he never afterwards abandoned, of the ideal Philosophy. 
Here he found a solution of his doubts — a religion for his 
mind. Almost at the same time that his intellect is calmed 
and deepened by philosophy, his taste acquires harmonious 
symmetry and repose from the study of the ancient master- 
pieces. From that period, his style attains its final beauty 

* Thus Schiller himself calls his " Bobbers " a " monster produced by the 
unnatural union of Genius with Thraldom." 



286 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

of simplicity combined with stateliness, and vigour best 
shown by ease. A happy marriage, a fame assured, an 
income competent to his wants, serve permanently to settle 
into earnest and serious dignity a life hitherto restless — an 
ambition hitherto vague and undefined. Thenceforth he 
surrenders himself wholly to the highest and purest objects 
human art can attain. His frame is attacked, his health 
gone for ever ; but the body has here no influence on the 
mind. Schiller lives in his art ; he attains to the ideal 
existence he has depicted ; he becomes the Pure Form, the 
Archetype, the Gestcdt, that he has described in his poem 
of the " Ideal and the Actual ; " living divorced from the 
body — in the heavenly fields a spirit amongst the gods. It 
is now that we trace in his works the influences of two 
master-minds with which he lived familiarly — William von 
Humboldt and Goethe. 1 * The first we see in his mystical, 
typical, and Kantian compositions ; the last in the more 
lucid and genial spirit of his lyrics and his narratives. By 
degrees, the latter happily prevailed. As Humboldt re- 
ceded from the scene, and his intercourse with Goethe 
mellowed, Schiller comes out of the cloud into the light. 
He recognises the true ideal of art ; the clear expression 
of serene thought ; the Grecian Athene prevailing over 
the typical Egyptian Naith. The last influence produced 
on him by profane literature was in the works of Calderon, 
then just translated ; and which, according to the testi- 
mony of Goethe, deeply and sensibly impressed him. But 
he did not survive long enough for that impression to 
become apparent in his own compositions. 

We omit all detailed criticism of Schiller's Dramas ; for 
they have been made more or less familiar to the reader, 
by various translations, by repeated notices in our popular 
journals, and by the attention they have received in the 
biographical work of Mr. Carlyle. Our limits would not 
permit us to do justice to works requiring lengthened and 
elaborate considerations, or to enter into a controversy with 
other critics, from whom we may differ as fco their merits 
or defects. Briefly, it appears to us, that, like the dramas 

* The intimacy between Goethe and Schiller was the more remarkable, 
because it was almost purely intellectual. Goethe says, in a conversation 
with Eckermann, "that there was no necessity for especial fneudsHp 
between them — their common efforts made their noblest bond." 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 287 

of many great poets, from Byron np even to Shakspeare, 
their highest merit is not that purely dramatic. Perhaps 
of this quality there is more in the earlier than the later 
Tragedies. " The Robbers " is still upon the whole the 
most frequently acted of all Schiller's Plays. * Glancing 
over his riper performances, his grandest, in point of in- 
tellect, is " TVallenstein : " in point of verbal poetry, of 
music and expression, " The Bride of Messina" is the 
loveliest : in point of feeling and conception " The Maid 
of Orleans " most engrosses the heart and enlists the 
fancy. But the one in which Schiller, with the fullest suc- 
cess, emancipates his art from himself — in which, his own 
individuality the least moulds and influences his creations — 
seems to us the " Wilhelm Tell." As his chief merit, 
whether as Man or Artist, lay in bis earnestness, so in that 
earnestness lay his main defect as a writer for the Stage. 
He could not, as the stage-writer really ought, reflect in- 
differently — velutiin speculum — vice and virtue f — the mean 
and the sublime. He could not escape the temptation of 
placing in the mouths of his characters tbe sentiments he 
desired to enforce upon the world — even thougb the oc- 
casion was inappropriate. All his favourite characters 
talk too much — and too much as Schiller thought and 
Schiller felt. Morally one of the least selfish of men, — 
intellectually he is one of the most egotistical. Who that 
held the doctrine that the Dramatist, the Poet, should be 
the Preacher, could fail to be so ? He loved Truth too 
much to suffer her to be silent, whenever he had occasion 
to make her oracles be heard. The complex varieties — the 
sinuous windings of human character, are, for the most 
part, without the pale of Ms conscientious and stately 

* The true test of the Dramatic faculty, apart from the Poetical, is its 
practical adaptability to the stage. A play of very inferior literary merit 
may keep its hold on the boards, to the exclusion of works infinitely more 
poetical, by its dramatic qualities ; — viz., by the correspondence between 
the action of its plot and emotions the most generally popular. . . . 
Hence the vitality on the stage of plays that are almost despised in the 
library — such as the "Stranger," " Pizarro," &c. Kotzebue's dramatic 
talent, as separate from intellectual excellence or poetic inspiration, is 
positively wonderful, and deserves the minutest study of all practical 
writers for the stage. Of this, Schiller was fully aware. 

t Thus Madame de Stael well observes, " that he lived, spoke, and acted 
as if the wicked did not exist ; and when in his works he described them, it 
was with more exaggeration and less depth than if he had really known 
them." 



288 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

genius. He thus avoids (at least in his later works) the 
vulgar reproach attached to Goethe, and which might with 
equal truth be urged against Shakspeare, viz., that he 
makes error amiable, and clothes crime with charm. His 
characters are, for the most part, embodiments of great prin- 
ciples and great truths, rather than the flexible and multi- 
form representations of human nature, which, while ideal- 
ised into poetry, still render the creations of Shakspeare 
so living and distinct. 

Schiller is thus, on the whole, greater as a Poet than a 
Dramatist — so, indeed, is Shakspeare, but from entirely 
different and opposite causes: Shakspeare, from the ex- 
quisite subtlety of his imagination, which, in a Caliban, an 
Ariel, a Titania, escapes the grossness of representation ; 
Schiller, from too statuelike a rigidity and hardness : we 
do not see the veins at play beneath his marble. 

It is in the Collection of his Minor Poems that Schiller's 
true variety is best seen — a variety not of character, but of 
thought, of sentiment, of fancy, of diction, and of metre. 
In those poems are the confessions of his soul, as well as 
the exercises of his genius. For, with a little modification, 
what Jean Paul said of Herder, may be said of Schiller, 
" that he was less a Poet than a Poem/' — and therefore, 
all his poetry should be studied as illustrations of the 
Human Poem — Schiller himself ! 

Any comparison between Goethe and Schiller would be, 
and has been, but a futile attempt at comparing dissimi- 
larities.^ We shall waste no time in attempting to show 
where one' is greater or the other less. Brothers they were 
in life — let them shine together in equal lustre — the im- 
mortal Dioscuri — twin stars ! Nor shall we touch upon 
those theories of art which the mention of Schiller and 
Goethe calls into discussion amongst the metaphysical 
critics of their country. We cannot invent a set of school 
terms to prove, without farther discussion, that one poem 
is great because objective — another not so great because 
subjective. Beauty escapes all technical definitions; the 
art of estimating beauty — viz., criticism — must follow the 
genius it would examine through all its capricious wind- 

* Goethe himself is reported to have said, " The Germans are great fools 
to quarrel which should take the prior rank, Schiller or myself— they ought 
only to be too happy that they have us both." 



THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 289 

ings, and admire equally, Milton where subjective, — and 
where objective, Shakspeare. 

There is a class of poets in which self -consciousness is 
scarcely perceptible ; another in which it is pervading and 
intense. In the former class, Shakspeare and Homer 
tower pre-eminent ; in the latter, we recognise Dante and 
Milton — Schiller, Byron, and Burns. 

To the last two, Schiller, in some attributes of his 
genius, bears a greater resemblance * than perhaps to any 
of his own countrymen ; resembling them in the haunting 
sense of individuality — in the power of blending interest 
for the poet with delight in the poem — in the subordina- 
tion of sentiment to feeling — in the embodiment of what 
is peculiar in forms the most widely popular ; — resembling 
them in these points, differing from them no less widely 
in others, according as the different modifications of life, 
habits, education, heart, and conscience, differ in the 
English noble, the German student, the Scotch peasant. 
But in all three there is this characteristic of a common 
tribe — their poetry expresses themselves. To borrow the 
idea of Schiller himself, they seek truth in the heart 
within — others in the world without, — by each order of 
inquirer can truth equally be found : Or, to avail ourselves 
again of Schiller's accurate and noble distinction, whether 
light breaks into the variety of colours in which its in- 
dividuality is lost, or unites the colours into a single 
shimmer, it is still the light which vivifies and illumes 
the world. 

Mr. Carlyle quotes, with some approval, a dogmatic 
assertion,," that readers till their twenty-fifth year usually 
prefer Schiller; after their twenty-fifth year, Goethe." f 
If Herder and Novalis are right in their belief that the 
true elements of wisdom and poetry are found freshest and 
purest in the young, this is no disparagement to Schiller. 
It is, certainly, only in proportion as the glow for all that 
is noble in thought and heroic in character fades from the 
weaker order of mind, amidst the cavils, disgusts, and 
scepticism of later life, that the halo around the genius of 
Schiller, which is but a reflection of all that is noble and 

* Goethe himself has remarked the similarity in some points between 
Byron and Schiller. 
•f Carlyle' s Miscellanies, vol. iii. p. 65. 

17 



290 THE LIFE OF SCHILLER. 

heroic, wanes also into feebler lustre. For the stronger 
nature, which still " feels as the enthusiast, while it learns 
to see as the world-wise, " * . . . there is no conceivable 
reason why Schiller should charm less in maturity than 
youth. 

Finally, as, in the life of Schiller, the student may 
gather noble and useful lessons of the virtue of manly 
perseverance — of the necessity of continued self-cultiva- 
tion — of the alliance between labour and success — between 
honesty and genius ; — so in his Poems will be found, living 
and distinct, a great and forcible intellect ever appealing 
to the best feelings — ever exalting those whom it addresses 
— ever intent upon strengthening man in his struggles 
with his destiny, and uniting with a golden chain the outer 
world and the inner to the celestial throne. 

* Schiller, " Light and Warmth." 



ON THE CAUSES OF HORACE'S 
POPULARITY.* 



No one denies that there are greater poets than Horace ; 
and mnch has been said in disparagement even of some of 
the merits most popularly assigned to him, by scholars who 
have, nevertheless, devoted years of laborious study to the 
correction of his text or the elucidation of his meaning. 
But whatever his faults or deficiencies, he has remained 
unexcelled in that special gift of genius which critics define 
by the name of charm. Xo collection of small poems, 
ancient or modern, has so universally pleased the taste of 
all nations as Horace's Odes, or been so steadfastly secure 
from all the capricious fluctuations of time and fashion. In 
vain have critics insisted on the superior genius evinced in 
the scanty relics left to us of the Greek lyrists, and even on 
the more spontaneous inspiration which they detect in the 
exquisite delicacy of form that distinguishes the muse of 
Catullus. Horace still reigns supreme as the lyrical singer 
most enthroned in the affections, most congenial to the 
taste, of the complex multitude of students in every land 
and in every age. 

It is an era in the life of the schoolboy when he first com- 
mences his acquaintance with Horace. He gets favourite 
passages by heart with a pleasure which (Homer alone 
excepted) no other ancient poet inspires. Throughout 
life the lines so learnt remain on his memory, rising up 
alike in gay and in grave moments, and applying them- 
selves to varieties of incident and circumstance with the 
felicitous suppleness of proverbs. Perhaps in the interval 
between boyhood and matured knowledge of the world, the 

* [Prefixed to Lord Lytton's translations of the Odes and Epodes of 
Horace, published in 1869, after having appeared in the pages of " Black- 
wood's ^Magazine."] 

U 2 



292 causes of Horace's popularity. 

attractive influence of Horace is suspended in favour of 
some bolder poet adventuring far beyond the range of his 
temperate though sunny genius, into the extremes of heated 
passion or frigid metaphysics — 

" Visere gostiens 
Qua parte debacchentur ignes, 
Qua nebulae pluviiquerores."* 

But as men advance in years they again return to Horace 
— again feel the young delight in his healthful wisdom, his 
manly sense, his exquisite combination of playful irony and 
cordial earnestness. They then discover in him innumer- 
able beauties before unnoticed, and now enjoyed the more 
for their general freedom from those very efforts at intense 
emotion and recondite meaning for which, in the revolu- 
tionary period of youth, they admired the writers who appear 
to them, when reason and fancy adjust their equilibrium in 
the sober judgment of maturer years, feverishly exagge- 
rated or tediously speculative. That the charm of Horace 
is thus general and thus imperishable, is a proposition 
which needs no proof. It is more interesting and less trite 
to attempt to analyse the secrets of that charm, and see 
how far the attempt may suggest hints of art to the num- 
berless writers of those poems which aim at the title of 
lyrical composition, and are either the trinkets of a tran- 
sitory fashion, or the ornaments of enduring vogue, ac- 
cording as they fail or succeed in concentrating the rays of 
poetry into the compactness and solidity of imperishable 
gems. ^ 

The first peculiar excellence of Horace is in his personal 
character and temperament rather than his intellectual 
capacities ; it is in his genial humanity. He touches us 
on so many sides of our common nature ; he has sympa- 
thies with such infinite varieties of men ; he is so equally 
at home with us in town and country, in our hours of 
mirth, in our moments of dejection. Are w T e poor ? he 
disarms our envy of the rich by greeting as a sj3ecial boon 
of the Deity the suffisance which He bestows with a thrifty 
hand ; and, distinguishing poverty from squalor, shows 

* [" . . .bounding blithely to visit 

Either pole, where the mist or the sun 

Holds the orgies of water or fire. "] 



causes of Horace's popularity. 293 

what attainable elegance can embellish a home laro'e 
enough to lodge content. Are we rich ? he inculcates 
moderation, and restrains ns from purse-pride with the 
kindliness of a spirit free from asceticism, and sensi- 
tive to the true enjoyments of life. His very defects 
and weaknesses of character serve to increase his at- 
traction; he is not too much elevated above our own 
erring selves. 

Next to the charm of his humanity is that of his incli- 
nation towards the agreeable aspects of our mortal state. 
He invests the virtues of patience amidst the trials of 
adversity with the dignity of a serene sweetness, and exalts 
even the frivolities of worldly pleasure with associations of 
heartfelt friendship and the refinements of music and song. 
Garlands entwined with myrtle, and wine- cups perfumed 
with nard, seem fit emblems of the banqueter who, when 
he indulges his Genius, invokes the Muse and invites the 
Grace. With this tender humanity and with this plea- 
surable temperament is blended a singular manliness of 
sentiment. In no poet can be found lines that more rouse, 
or more respond to, the generous impulse of youth 
towards fortitude and courage, sincerity and honour, 
devoted patriotism, the superiority of mind over the 
vicissitudes of fortune, and a healthful reliance on the 
wisdom and goodness of the one divine providential 
Power, who has no likeness and no second, even in the 
family of Olympus. 

Though at times he speaks as the Epicurean, at other 
times as the Stoic, and sometimes as both in the same 
poem, he belongs -exclusively to neither school. Out of 
both he has poetised a practical philosophy which, even in 
its inconsistencies, establishes a harmony with our own 
inconsistent natures ; for most men are to this day in 
part Epicurean, in part Stoic. Horace is the poet of 
Eclecticism. 

Erom the width of his observation, and the generalising 
character of his reasoning powers, Horace is more em- 
phatically the representative of civilisation than any other 
extant lyrical poet. Though describing the manners of his 
own time, he deals in types and pictures, sentiments and 
opinions, in which every civilised time finds likeness and 
expression. Hence men of the world claim him as one of 



294 causes of Horace's popularity. 

their order, and they cheerfully accord to him an admira- 
tion which they scarcely concede to any other poet. It is 
not only the easy good-natnre of his philosophy, and his 
lively wit, that secure to him this distinction, but he owes 
much also to that undefinable air of good-breeding which is 
independent of all conventional fashions, and is recognised 
in every society where the qualities that constitute good- 
breeding are esteemed. Catullus has quite as much wit, 
and is at least as lax, where he appears in the character of 
a man of pleasure — Catullus is equally intimate with the 
great men of his time, and in grace of diction is by many 
preferred to Horace ; yet Catullus has never attained to 
the same oracnlar eminence as Horace among men of the 
world, and does not, in their eyes, command the same rank 
in that high class of gentlemen — thorough-bred authors. 
For if we rightly interpret genius by ingeniurn — viz., the 
inborn spirit which accommodates all conventional circum- 
stances around it to its own native property of form and 
growth — there is a genius of gentleman as there is a genius 
of poet. That which his countrymen called urbanitas, in 
contradistinction to provincial narrowness of mind or vul- 
garity of taste, to false finery and affected pretence, is the 
essential attribute of the son of the Venusian freedman. 
And with this quality, which needs for brilliant develop- 
ment familiar converse with the types of mind formed by 
a polished metropolis, Horace preserves, in a degree un- 
known to those who, like Pope and Boileau, resemble him 
more or less on the town-bred side of his character, the 
simple delight in rnral nature, which makes him the 
favourite companion of those whom cool woodlands, 
peopled with the beings of fable, " set apart from the 
crowd." He might be as familiar with Sir Philip Sidney 
in the shades of Penshurst, as witlj. Lord Chesterfield in 
the saloons of Mayfair. And out of this rare combination 
of practical wisdom and poetical sentiment there grows 
that noblest part of his moral teaching which is distinct 
from schools and sects, and touches at times upon chords 
more spiritual than those who do not look below the sur- 
face would readily detect. Hence, in spite of his occasional 
sins, he has always found indulgent favour with the clergy 
of every Church. Among the dozen books which form the 
library of the village cure of France, Horace is sure to be 



CAUSES OF HORACES POPULARITY. 295 

one ; and the greatest dignitaries of our own Church are 
among his most sedulous critics and his warmest pane- 
gyrists. With all his melancholy conceptions of the 
shadow-land beyond the Grave, and the half -sportive, half- 
pathetic injunction, therefore, to make the most of the 
passing hour, there lies deep within his heart a conscious- 
ness of nobler truths, which ever and anon find impressive 
utterance, suggesting precepts and hinting consolations 
that elude the rod of Mercury, and do not accompany the 
dark flock to the shores of Styx : 

" Virtus recludens immeritis mori 
Coelum negata tentat iter via." * 

Thus we find his thoughts interwoven with Milton's later 
meditations ; f and Condorcet, baffled in aspiration of 
human perfectibility on earth, dies in his dungeon with 
Horace by his side, open at the verse which says, by what 
arts of constancy and fortitude in mortal travail Pollux 
and Hercules attained to the citadels of light. 

It is, then, mainly to this large and many-sided nature in 
the man himself that Horace owes his unrivalled popularity 
— a popularity which has indeed both widened in its circle 
and deepened in its degree in proportion to the increase of 
modern civilisation. And as the popularity is thus so much 
derived from the qualities in which the man establishes 
friendly intimacy with all ranks of his species, so it is ac- 
companied with that degree of personal affection which few 
writers have the happiness to inspire. We give willing ear 
to the praise of his merits, and feel a certain displeasure at 
the criticisms which appear harshly to qualify and restrict 
them ; we are indulgent to his faults, and rejoice when 
the diligent research and kindly enthusiasm of German 
scholars redeem his good name from any aspersions that 
had been too lightly credited. It pleases us to think that 
most, perhaps all, among his erotic poems which had left 
upon our minds a painful impression, and which a decorous 
translator shuns, are no genuine expressions of the poet's 
own sentiment or taste, but merely a Roman artist's trans- 
lation or paraphrase from the Greek originals.]: We 

* [" Virtue essays her flight through ways to all but her denied ; 

To those who do not merit death she opes the gates of heaven."] 
f See Milton's Sonnet, rxi., To Cyriac Skinner. 
J The opinion at which most Horatian scholars have now arrived is well 



296 causes of Horace's popularity. 

readily grant the absurdity of any imputation upon the 
personal courage of Brutus's young officer, founded upon 
the modest confession, that on the fatal field of Philippi, 
when those who most vaunted their valour fled in panic or 
bit the dust, he too had left his shield not too valiantly 
behind him ; he who, in the same poem, addressed to a 
brother soldier, tells us that he had gone through the 
worst extremities in that bloody war. For those pane- 
gyrics on Augustus which, in our young days, we re- 
garded as renegade flattery bestowed upon a man who 
had destroyed the political liberties for which the poet had 
fought, we accept the rational excuses which are sug- 
gested by our own maturer knowledge of life and of the 
grateful human heart, and our profounder acquaintance 
with the events and circumstances of the age. We see 
in the poems themselves, when fairly examined, with 
what evident sincerity Horace vindicates his enthusiastic 
admiration of a prince whom he identifies with the 
establishment of safety to property and life, with the 
restoration of arts and letters, with the reform of manners 
and the amelioration of laws. We can understand with 
what genuine horror a patriot so humane must have re- 
garded the fratricide of intestine wars, . and with what 
honest gratitude so ardent a lover of repose and peace 
would have exclaimed, — 

" Custode rcrum Caesare, non furor 
Civilis aut vis exiget otium." * 

If to the rule of one man this blessed change was to be 
ascribed, and if public opinion so cordially endorsed that 
assumption, that the people themselves placed their ruler in 

expressed by Estre in his judicious and invaluable work, " Horatiana 
Prosopograpneia : " " Credo Horatium prorsus abstinuisse a puerorum amor- 
ibus, etiamsi ipse, joeans, aliter de se profitcatur. Distabant, si quid judico, 
Horatii tempore, puerorum amores tantum a persona sancti castique vii 
quantum libera venus nostris temporibus abest. jSTovi autem hodie quoque, 
quis ignorat, juvencs virosque vel castissimos ct sanctissimos, inter amieos, 
animi causa, ita jocantes, quasi liberam venerem ardentissime sectarentur. 
Nee Libriiv. carm. i. euro, seriptum, uti egregie observavit Lessingius, post 
legem Juliam latam de pudieitia quinn nemo amplius amorem in puerum 
palam celebrare ausus fuisset." — P. 524:. 

* [" Caesar our guardian, neither eivil rage 

Nor felon violence scares us from repose. "] 



causes of Horace's popularity. 297 

the order of Divinities — it scarcely needs even an excuse for 
the poet that he joined in the general apotheosis of the 
great prince, who to him was the benignant protector and 
the sympathising friend. When the population have once 
tested the security of established order, and, with terrified 
remembrance of the bloodshed and havoc of a previous 
anarchy, felt the old liberty rather voluntarily slip than be 
violently wrenched from their hands, a benevolent auto- 
cracy that consults the public opinion which installs it 
seems a blessing to the many, and is accepted as a neces- 
sity by the few. And if the professed statesmen and 
political thinkers of the time — the Pollios and the 
Messalas, the most eminent partisans of M. Antony, the 
noblest companions of Brutus — acquiesced, with the more 
courtly and consistent Maecenas, in the established govern- 
ment of Augustus, it would indeed be no reproach to a 
man whose mind habitually shunned gloomy anticipations 
of the distant future, that he could not foresee the terrible 
degeneration of manners and the military despotism which 
were destined to grow out of the clement autocracy of 
that accomplished prince who had won the title of " father 
of his country," and who might be seen on summer 
evenings angling in the Tiber, or stretched upon its banks 
amidst a ring of laughing children, with whom the 
Emperor whose word gave law to the Indian and the Mecle 
was playing with nuts and pebbles. 

What Horace was as man, can, however, furnish but 
little aid to those who desire to rival him as poet — little 
aid, indeed, except as it may serve to show how far a genial 
and cordial temperament, an independent and manly spirit, 
and a fellowship with mankind in their ordinary pursuits 
and tastes, contribute to the culture and amenities of the 
poet who would make his monument more lasting than 
bronze and more lofty than the pyramids. But in Horace, 
as artist, we may perhaps, on close examination, discover 
some peculiarities of conception and form sufficiently 
marked and pervasive to evince that with him they were 
rules of art ; so successful as to make them worthy of 
study, and hitherto so little noticed, even by his most 
elaborate critics, as to justify an attempt to render them 
more generally intelligible and instructive. 

In what 1 am about to eay on this head, I confine my 



298 causes of Horace's popularity. 

remarks to the short lyrical pieces to which, commentators 
after his time gave the name of Odes, and on which his 
eminence as a poet must mainly rely. Whatever merit 
be ascribed to his Satires, it is scarcely in the power 
of genius to raise satire to an elevated rank in poetry. 
Satire, indeed, is the antipodes of poetry in its essence and 
its mission. Satire always tends to dwarf, and it cannot 
fail to caricature ; but poetry does nothing if it does not 
tend to enlarge and exalt, and if it does not seek rather to 
beautify than reform. And though such didactic and 
moralising vein as belongs to the Epistles of Horace be in 
itself much higher than satire, and in him has graces of 
style that, with his usual consummate taste, he rejects for 
satire, which he regards but as a rhythmical prose, still, 
the higher atmosphere in which the genius of lyrical song 
buoys and disports itself is not within the scope of that 
didactic form of poetry which " walks highest but not 
flies. " Hegel, in his luminous classification of the various 
kinds of poetry, has perhaps somewhat too sharply drawn 
the line between its several degrees of rank ; yet every one 
acquainted with the rudimentary principles of criticism 
must acknowledge, that just as it requires a larger com- 
bination of very rare gifts to write an epic or a drama 
which the judgment of ages allows to be really great, than 
to write a lyrical poem, so it demands a much finer 
combination of some of the rarest of those rare gifts to 
write a lyrical poem which becomes the song of all times 
and nations, than to write a brilliant sarcasm upon human 
infirmities, or an elegant lecture in the style of an Epistle. 
These last require but talents, however great, which are 
more or less within the province of prose-writers. The 
novel of " Gil Bias " or the Essays of Montaigne evince 
qualities of genius equal at least to those displayed in 
Horace's Satires and Epistles. But if you were to multiply 
Lesages and Montaignes ad infinitum, they could not ac- 
complish a single one of Horace's nobler odes. 
f Now, the first thing that strikes us in examining the 
secrets of Horace's art in lyrical poetry — and which I ven- 
ture humbly to think it would be well for modern lyrists to 
study — is his terseness. Terseness is one of the surest 
proofs of painstaking. Nothing was ever more truthful in 
art than the well-known reply of the writer to the friendly 



CAUSES OF HOE ACE'S POPULARITY. 299 

critic, who said, " You are too prolix : " "I had not time to 
be shorter." 

We know from Horace himself that he bestowed upon 
his artist-work an artist's labour — " Operosa carmina 
jingo." He seems to have so meditated upon the subject 
he chooses as to be able to grasp it readily. There is no 
wandering after ideas — no seeking to prolong and over- 
adorn the main purpose for which he writes. If it be but 
a votive inscription to Diana, in which he dedicates a tree 
to her, he does not let his command of language carry 
him beyond the simple idea he desires to express. He 
seems always to consider that he is addressing a very civi- 
lised and a very impatient audience, which has other occu- 
pations in life besides that of reading verses ; and nothing 
in him is more remarkable than his study not to be 
tedious. Perhaps, indeed, it is to this desire that some of 
his shortcomings up to the mark which very poetical critics 
would assign to lyrical rapture are to be ascribed ; but it is 
a fault on the right side. 

The next and much more important characteristic of 
Horace as a lyrical artist is commonly exhibited in his 
grander odes, and often in his lighter ones ; and to this I 
do not know if I can give a more expressive word than 
picturesqueness. His imagination, in his Odes, predomi- 
nates over all his other qualities, great as those other 
qualities are ; and that which he images being clear to 
himself, he contrives in very few words to render it dis- 
tinct and vivid to the reader. When Lydia is entreated 
not to spoil Sybaris ; by enumerating the very sports for 
which her lover has lost taste, he brings before us the 
whole picture of an athletic young Roman noble — his 
achievements in horsemanship, swimming, gymnastics ; 
when, in the next ode, he calls on the Feastmaster to heap 
up the fagots, and bring out the wine, and enjoy his youth 
while he may, he slides into a totally different picture. 
Here it is the young Roman idler, by whom only the 
mornings are devoted to the Campus Martins, the after- 
noons to the public lounge, the twilights to amorous 
assignations ; and the whole closes still with a picture, the 
girl hiding herself within the threshold, and betrayed by 
her laugh, while the lover rushes in and snatches away the 
love token from the not too reluctant finger. When he 



300 CAUSES OF HOEACE'S POPULARITY. 

invites Tyndaris to his villa, the spot is brought before the 
eye : the she-goats browsing amid the arbute and wild 
thyme ; the pebbly slopes of Ustica ; the green nook 
sheltered from the dog-star ; the noon- day entertainment ; 
the light wines and the lute. The place and the figures 
are before us as clearly as if on the canvas of a painter. 
He would tell you that he is marked from childhood for 
the destiny of poet ; and he charms the eye with the pic- 
ture of the truant infant asleep on the wild mountain- side, 
safe from the bear and the adder, while the doves cover 
him with leaves. 

With a rarer and higher attribute of art Horace intro- 
duces the dramatic element very largely and prominently 
into his lyrics. His picture becomes a scene. His ideas 
take life and form as personations. Does he wish to dis- 
suade his countrymen from the notion of transferring the 
seat of government from Rome to Asia, or perhaps, rather, 
from some large emigration and military settlement in the 
East ? He calls up the image of the Founder of Rome 
borne to heaven in the chariot of Mars ; ranges the gods 
in council on Olympus ; and puts into the lips of Juno tho 
warning which he desires to convey. Does he seek to dis- 
courage popular impatience for the return of the Parthian 
prisoners — viz., the soldiers of Crassus who had settled and 
married in the land of the conqueror ? He evokes the 
great form of Regulus urging the Senate to refuse to 
ransom the Roman captives taken by Carthage — places 
him as on a visible stage — utters his language, describes 
his looks, and shows him departing to face the tormentors, 
satisfied and serene. Would he console a girl for the ab- 
sence of her lover, and hint to herself a friendly caution 
against an insidious gallant ? In eight short stanzas he 
condenses a whole drama in personages and plot. Does he 
paint the reconciliation of two jealous lovers ? He makes 
them speak for themselves ; and their brief dialogue is 
among the most delightful of comedies. Would he tell us 
that he is going to sup with convivial friends ? He sud- 
denly transports us into the midst of the scene, regulates 
the toasts, calls for the flowers and music, babbles out his 
loves. The scene lives. 

Not to weary the reader with innumerable instances of 
this art of picture and of drama, so sedulously cultivated 



causes of Horace's popularity. 301 

by Horace, I Trill only observe that the various imitators 
of Horace have failed to emulate this the most salient cha- 
racteristic of his charm in construction ; and that even his 
numerous commentators have but slightly noticed it — nay, 
some have even censured as a desultory episode that which, 
according to Horace's system of treating his subject, is the 
substance of the poem itself. For the commencing stanzas 
sometimes only serve as a frame to the picture which he 
intends to paint, or a prologue to the scene which he 
proposes to dramatise. 

Thus he begins a poem by an invocation to Mercury and 
the lyre to teach him a strain that may soften the coy heart 
of a young girl ; passes rapidly to the effect of music even 
upon the phantoms in the shades below ; the Danaides rest 
their urn, and then, as if the image of the Danaides spon- 
taneously and suddenly suggested the idea, he places on the 
scene the sister murderesses at night slaughtering their 
bridegrooms — and the image of Hypermnestra, the sole 
gentle and tender one, waking her lord and urging him 
to fly. 

So, again, when his lady friend, Galatea, is about to 
undertake a voyage, he begins by a playful irony about 
omens, hastens to the reality of stormy seas — and suddenly 
we have the picture of Europa borne from the field-flowers 
to the midst of the ocean. We behold her forlorn and alone 
on the shores of Crete — hearken to the burst of her despair 
and repentance — and see the drama conclude with the con- 
solatory appearance of Venus, and Cupid with his loosened 
bow. To some commentators these vivid presentations of 
dramatic imagery have appeared exotic to the poem — 
episodes and interludes. But the more they are examined 
as illustrative of Horace's peculiar culture of lyric art, the 
more (in this respect not unimitative of Pindar) they stand 
out as the body of his piece, and the developed completion 
of his purpose. Take them away, and the poems them- 
selves would shrink into elegant vers d 'occasion. Horace, in 
a word, generally studies to secure to each of his finer and 
more careful poems, however brief it be, that which play- 
writers call a "backbone." And even where he does not 
obtain this through direct and elaborate picture or dra- 
matic effect and interest, he achieves it perhaps in a sino-le 
stanza, embodying some striking truth or maxim of popular 



302 causes op Horace's popularity. 

application, expressed with a terseness so happy, that all 
times and all nations adopt it as a proverb. 

We see, then, how much of his art in construction de- 
pends on his lavish employ of picture and drama — how 
much on compression and brevity. We must next notice, 
as constituent elements of Horace's peculiar charm, his 
employment of playful irony, and the rapidity of his tran- 
sitions from sportive to earnest, earnest to sportive ; so that, 
perhaps, no poet more avails himself of the effect of " sur- 
prise " — yet the surprise is not coarse and glaring, but for 
the most part singularly subdued and delicate — arising 
sometimes from a single phrase, a single word. He has 
thus, in his lyrics, more of that combination of tragic and 
comic elements to which the critics of a former age ob- 
jected in Shakspeare, than perhaps any poet extant except 
Shakspeare himself. The consideration of this admirably 
artistic fidelity to the mingled yarn of life, leads us on to 
the notice of Horatian style and diction. 

The character of the audience he more immediately ad- 
dresses will naturally have a certain effect on the style of 
an author, and an effect great in proportion to his practical 
good sense and good taste. ISTo man possessed of what the 
French call s avoir vivre, employs exactly the same style 
even in extempore discourse, whether he addresses a select 
audience of scholars or a miscellaneous popular assembly. 
The readers for whom Horace more immediately wrote 
were the polite and intellectual circles of Rome, wherein a 
large proportion were too busy, and a large proportion too 
idle, to allow themselves to be diverted very far, or for 
long at a stretch, into poetic regions, whether of thought 
or diction, remote from their ordinary topics and habitual 
lauguage. Horace does not, therefore, in the larger num- 
ber of songs composed — some to be popularly sung and all 
to be popularly read — build up a poetic language distinct 
from that of conversation. On the contrary, with some 
striking exceptions, where the occasion is unusually solemn, 
he starts from the conversational tone, seeks to familiarise 
himself winningly with his readers, and leads them on to 
loftier sentiment, uttered in more noble eloquence — just as 
an orator, beginning very simply, leads on the assembly he 
addresses. And possibly Horace's manner in this respect 
- — which, though in a less marked degree, is also that of 



causes of Horace's popularity. 803 

Catullus in most of the few purely lyrical compositions the 
latter has left to us — may be traced to the influence which 
oratory exercised over the generation born in the last days 
of the Republic. For in the age of Cicero and Hortensius 
it may be said that the genius of the Roman language 
developed itself rather in the beauties which belong to 
oratory than those which lie more hidden from popular 
appreciation in the dells and bosks of song. 

And as the study of rhetoric and oratory formed an 
essential part of education among the Roman youths con- 
temporary with Horace, so that study would unconsciously 
mould the taste of the poet in his selection and arrange- 
ment of verbal decorations. Be the cause what it may, 
nothing is more noticeable in Horace's style than its usual 
conformity with oratorical art, its easy familiarisation with 
the minds addressed, its avoidance of over-floridity and 
recondite mysticism, and its reliance for effects that are 
to fascinate the imagination, touch the heart, rouse the 
soul, upon something more than the delicacies of poetic 
form. His reliance, in short, is upon the sentiment, the 
idea, which the glow of expression animates and illumes. 
Thus that curiosa felicitas v&rborwm justly ascribed to 
Horace has so much of the masculine, oratorical character 
— so unites a hardy and compact simplicity of phrase with 
a sentiment which itself has the nobleness or grace of poetry 
(as oratorical expression of the highest degree ever has) — 
that of all ancient poets Horace is the one who most fur- 
nishes the public speaker with quotations sure of striking 
effect in any public assembly to which the Latin language 
is familiar. Take one example among many. Mr. Pitt is 
said never to have more carried away the applause of the 
House of Commons than when, likening England — then 
engaged in a war tasking all her resources — to that image 
of Rome which Horace has placed in the mouth of Hannibal 
— he exclaimed : — 

" Duris ut ilex tonsa biperrnibus 
Nigrte feraci frondis in Algido, 
Per darruia, per caedes, ab ipso 
D licit opes anhnunigue ferro. " * 



* 



[" Even as the ilex, lopped by axes rude, 
"Where rich with dusky boughs, soars Algidus, 
Through loss, through wounds, receives 
New gain, new life — yea, from the very steel."] 



304 causes of Horace's popularity. 

Now, this passage, when critically examined, does not 
owe its unmistakable poetry to any form of words, any 
startling epithet, inadmissible in prose, but to an illustra- 
tion at once very noble and yet very simple ; and, in 
rapidity of force, in the development and completion of the 
idea, so akin to oratory, that an impassioned speaker who 
had his audience in his hands might have uttered the 
substance of it in prose. 

I may perhaps enable the general reader to comprehend 
more clearly what I mean by Horace's art in diction as 
starting from the conversational tone, and, save on rare 
occasions, avoiding a style antagonistic to prose, by a re- 
ference to the two loveliest, most elaborate, and most perfect 
lyrics in our own language — " L' Allegro " and " II Pense- 
roso." In these odes Milton takes for representation the 
two types of temperament under which mankind are more 
or less divisibly ranged — viz., the cheerful and the pensive. 
But he treats these two common varieties of all our race as 
a poet, of a singularly unique temperament himself, ad- 
dressing that comparatively small number of persons who 
are poetically cheerful or 'poetically pensive. And in so 
addressing them his language is throughout essentially 
distinct from prose : it is, like most of his youthful poems, 
the very quintessence of poetic fancy, both in imagery and 
expression. Perfectly truthful in itself, the poetry in these 
masterpieces is still not of that kind of truthfulness which 
comes home to all men's business and bosoms. Like the 
poet's own soul, it is "a star, and dwells apart." It may 
be doubted whether Horace, in his very finest odes, ever, 
in his maturest age, wrote anything so exquisitely poeti- 
cal, regarded as pure poetry addressed to poets, as these 
two lyrics written by Milton in his youth. But then the 
difference between them and Horace's Odes is, that out of 
England the former are little known — certainly not appre- 
ciated. # Their beauty of form is so delicate, that it is 
only the eye of a native that can detect it — their truthful- 

* It may be said in answer to this, that on the Continent Latin is more 
read than English. True ; but that does not prevent those English poets 
who address themselves to a cosmopolitan audience, as Shakspeaie, and I 
may add Byron, being as well appreciated on the Continent as any Latin 
author is ; and I doubt whether even in England there be as many readers 
of poetry familiar with " L' Allegro " and "II Penseroso" as there are with 
the Odes of Horace. 



causes of Horace's popularity. 305 

ness to nature so limited to a circumscribed range of mind, 
that, even in England, neither the mirthful nor the melan- 
choly man, unless he be a poet or a student, recognises in 
either poem his own favourite tastes and pleasures. But 
where Horace describes men's pleasures, every man finds 
something of himself; the familiar kindliness of his lan- 
guage impresses its poetry upon those who have no preten- 
sion to be poets. Had Horace written with equal length 
and with equal care an "Allegro " and a " Penseroso," not 
only the poet and the student, not only the man of sentiment 
and reflection, but all varieties in our common family — the 
young lover, the ambitious schemer, the man of pleasure, 
the country yeoman, the city clerk, even the rural labourer 
— would have found lines in which he saw himself as in a 
mirror. 

Thus, then, Horace's exquisite felicity of wording is for 
the most part free from any sustained attempt at a lan- 
guage essentially distinct from that of conversation ; and 
for that very reason its beauties of poetical expression both 
please and strike the more, because they have more the air 
of those spontaneous flashes of genius which delight us in 
a great orator or a brilliant talker. 

I cannot pass by without comment a characteristic of 
" form " which, though found more or less in other ancient 
Poets, and not least in Virgil, is too strikingly conspicuous 
in Horace to escape the notice of any ordinary critic ; yet 
no critic has attempted satisfactorily to define the principles 
of art to which its peculiar fascination may be traced. It 
is in the choice of epithets derived from proper names, or 
rather the names of places, by which "generals" are 
individualised into " particulars." The sea is not the sea 
in general — it is the Hadrian, or the Myrtoan, or the 
Caspian sea ; the ship is not a ship in general — it is the 
Cyprian or the Bithynian ship ; the oaks, which are not 
always shaken by the blast, are not the oaks in general — 
they are the oaks upon Garganus ; the ilex, which thrives 
by being pruned, is not an ilex in general — it is the ilex 
upon Algidus ; and so forth, through innumerable in- 
stances. That in this peculiarity there is a charm to the 
ear and the mind of the reader, no one acquainted with 
Horace will deny. But whence that charm ? Partly be- 
cause it gives that kind of individuality which belongs to 

x 



306 CAUSES OF HORACES POPULARITY. 

personation — it takes the object out of a boundless 
common-place, and rivets the attention on a more fixed 
and definite image ; but principally because, while it 
thus limits the idea on the prosaic side of the object, it 
enlarges its scope, by many vague and subtle associations, 
on the poetic side. When a proper name is thus used — a 
proper name suggesting of itself almost insensibly to the 
mind the poetic associations which belong to the name 
— the idea is enlarged from a simple to a complex idea, 
adorned with delicate enrichments, and opening into 
many dim recesses of imagination. The keel of a ship 
suggests only a keel ; but the Cyprian keel connects itself 
with dreamy recollections of all the lovely myths about 
Cyprus. The ilex unpartieularised may be but an ilex by 
a dusty roadside, or in the grounds of a citizen's villa ; but 
the ilex of Algidus evokes, as an accompanying image, the 
haunted mountain- top sacred to Diana. The verse of 
Milton is largely indebted to such recourse to poetic proper 
names for the delight it occasions, not more by melodious 
sounds than by complex associations. Walter Scott owes 
much of the animation of his lyrical narratives to his fre- 
quent use of proper names in scenery connected with 
historic association or romantic legend ; and Macaulay's 
Roman Lays push the use of them almost to too evidently 
artificial an extreme, savouring a little overmuch of elabo- 
rate learning and perceptible imitation. But on the whole 
this exquisite beauty — in lyrical composition especially — 
is rare among later poets and may be safely commended to 
their study. It is noticeable that Horace has little or 
nothing of it in the Epodes (his earliest published poems, 
except the First Book of the Satires). Perhaps he thought 
it more especially appropriate to purely lyrical composi- 
tion, such as the Odes, than to the Epodes, which are not 
lyrical in form, and, with one exception, Epode xiii., are 
but partially lyrical in spirit. For it might be wrong to 
infer that it only occurred to him in the riper practice of 
his general art as poet, since some of the Odes in which it 
is found, though not published till after the Epodes, must 
have been composed within the period to which the latter 
are assigned. 

The defects or shortcomings of Horace as a poet are, like 
those of all original writers, intimately connected with his 



causes of Horace's popularity. 307 

peculiar merits. His strong good sense, and that which 
may be called the practical tendency of his mind in his 
views both of life and art, while they serve to secure to him 
so unrivalled a popularity among men of the world, not 
only deter him from the metaphysical speculation which 
would have been not less wearisome to the larger portion 
of his readers than distasteful to himself, as appertaining 
to those regions beyond the province of the human mind, 
" at which Jove laughs to see us outstretch our human 
cares/' — but rarely permit him to plumb very far into the 
deejDS of feeling and passion. Marvellously as he repre- 
sents the human nature we have all of us in common, each 
thoughtful man has yet in him a something of human 
nature peculiar to himself, which, like the goal of the 
Olympian charioteer, is sometimes almost grazed, but ever 
shunned, by the rapid wheels of the Yenusian. 

It may also be said that his turn for irony, or his de- 
ference to the impatient taste of a worldly audience, while 
serving to keep the attention always pleased, and con- 
tributing so largely to his special secrets in art, some- 
times shows itself unseasonably, and detracts from the 
effect of some noble passage, or interrupts the rush of some 
animated description. 

Take but one instance among many. In an ode which 
is among his grandest — Book IV., Ode iv., " Qualem 
ministrum f ulminis alitem " — when he comes, after imagery 
of epic splendour, to the victory of Drusus over the Vinde- 
lici, he checks himself to say, with a sort of mockery which 
would have been well in its place at a supper-table, that 
where the Vindelici learned the use of the Amazonian 
battle-axe he refrains from inquiring, for it is not possible 
to know everything. No doubt there was some " hit " or 
point in this parenthetical diversion which is now lost to 
us ; possibly it was a satirical allusion to some pedantic 
work or antiquarian speculation which was among the 
literary topics of the day ; but every reader of critical 
taste feels the jar of an episodical levity, inharmonious to 
all that goes before and after it.* It is like a sarcasm of 
Voltaire's thrust into the midst of an ode of Pindar's. 

* Some critics have indeed proposed to omit these digressive verses alto- 
gether, and consider them an impertinent interpolation by an inferior hand. 
But this is an audacity of assumption forbidden by the authority of manu- 

X 2 



308 CAUSES OF HOE ACES POPULARITY. 

From causes the same or similar, Horace's love-poetry 
has been accused of want of deep feeling, and compared in 
this' respect, disadvantageously, to the few extant frag- 
ments of Sappho. But here it may be observed, that in 
the whole character of Horace there is one marked 
idiosyncrasy which influences the general expression of his 
art. Like many men of our day, who unite to familiar 
intercourse with fashionable and worldly society an in- 
herent sincerity and a dread of all charlatanic pretences, 
Horace is even over-studious not to claim any false credit 
for himself — not to pretend to anything which may not be 
considered justly his due ; he will not pretend to be better 
born or richer, wiser or more consistent, or of a severer 
temper than he is. In his Satires and Epistles he even 
goes out of his way to tell us of his faults. In his Odes 
themselves — with all his intense and candidly uttered 
convictions of their immortality — he seizes frequent occa- 
sion for modest reference to the light and trivial themes 
to which his lyre and his genius are best suited. A man 
of this character, and with a very keen susceptibility to 
ridicule, would perhaps shun the expression of any feeling 
in love much deeper in its sentiment, or much more de- 
voted in its passion, than would find sympathy with the 
men of the world for whom he principally wrote. If he 
ever did compose love-poems so earnest and glowing, I 
think it doubtful whether he would have prevailed on him- 
self to publish them. To a poet who so earnestly seeks to 
inculcate moderation in every passion and desire, there 
would have seemed something not only inconsistent with 
his general repute as writer, but perhaps something offen- 
sive to his own sense of shame and the manliness of his 
nature, in that passionate devotion to the charms of a 
Cynthia to which Propertius refers the source of his 
inspiration and his loftiest pretension to the immortality of 
renown. And Horace is so far right, both as man and as 
artist, in the mode in which he celebrates the smiling 
goddess round whom hovers Mirth as well as Cupid, that, 
as man, one really would respect him less if any of those 
young ladies, who seem to have been too large-hearted to 

scripts, and justly denounced by the editors and critics whose opinions on 
such a subject Horatian students regard as decisive. 



causes of Horace's popularity. 309 

confine their affection to a single adorer, had inspired him 
with one of those rare passions which influence an entire 
existence. We should feel as mnch shame as compassion 
for any wise friend of ours whom Yenus linked lastingly in 
her brazen yoke to a Lydia or a Pyrrha. And as an artist, 
Horace appears so far right in his mode of dealing with 
erotic subjects, that, despite all this alleged want of deep 
feeling and passionate devotion, Horace's love-poetry is 
still the most popular in the world — the most imitated, the 
most quoted, the most remembered. The reason, perhaps, 
is, that most men have loved np to the extent that Horace 
admits the passion, and very few men have loved much 
beyond that limit. 

jSTot withstanding the amazing pains taken by grave pro- 
fessors and erudite divines to ascertain the history of 
Horace's love-affairs — to tell us wlio and what those young 
beauties were — whom he loved first and whom he loved 
last — how many of them are to be reduced to a select few, 
one being sung nnder different names lending their 
syllables to the same metrical convenience, so that Cinara, 
Lalage, Lydia, are one and the same person, &c. — the ques- 
tion remains insoluble. Some scholars have had even the 
cold-blooded audacity to assert that, with the single ex- 
ception of Cinara, and some strange sort of entanglement 
with the terrible sorceress to whom he gives the name of 
Canidia, all these Horatian beauties are myths and fig- 
ments — as purely dreams as those out of the ivory gate — 
many of them, no doubt, translations, more or less free, 
from the Greek. 

The safest conjecture here, as in most cases of disputed 
judgment, lies between extremes. 

It is probable enough, that a man like Horace — a man of 
wit and pleasure — thrown early into gay society, and of a 
very affectionate nature, as is evinced by the warmth of his 
friendships — should have been pretty often in what is com- 
monly called "love " during, say, thirty-nine years out of 
the fifty-seven in which he led a bachelor's life. And as 
few poets ever have been more subjective than Horace— 
ever received the aspect of life more decidedly through the 
medium of their own personal impressions — or more re- 
garded poetry as the vehicle of utterance for their opinions 
and doctrines, their likings and dislikings, their joys and 



310 CAUSES OF HOB ACE ? S POPULARITY. 

their sorrows — so it may be reasonably presumed that in 
many of his love-verses he expresses or symbolises his own 
genuine state of feeling. Nor if in some of these there be 
detected imitations from the .-Greek, does such imitation 
suffice to prove that the person addressed was imaginary, 
and the feeling uttered insincere. Nothing is more common 
among poets than the adaptation of ideas found elsewhere 
to their own individual circumstances and self- confessions. 
When Pope paraphrases Horace where Horace most exclu- 
sively personates himself, Pope still so paraphrases that the 
lines personate Pope and not Horace ; and one would know 
very little of the subjective character of Pope's mind and 
genius who could assert that he did not utter his own 
genuine feelings in describing, for instance, his early life 
and his early friendships, because the description was 
imitated from a Latin author. 

On the other hand, it is impossible to distinguish with 
any certainty what really does thus illustrate the actual 
existence of Horace, and does utter the sounds of his own 
heart, from those purely objective essays of his genius 
(for, like all poets who have the dramatic faculty strongly 
developed, he is objective as well as subjective) which 
were the sportive exercises of art, and the airy embodi- 
ments of fancy. It is safest here to leave an acute reader 
to his own judgment ; and it is one of those matters in 
which acute readers will perhaps differ the most. 

Among the faults of Horace may also be mentioned his 
marked tendency to self- repetition, and especially to the 
repetition of what one of his most admirable but least 
enthusiastic editors bluntly calls his " commonplaces : " 
viz., the shortness of life ; the wisdom of seizing the present 
hour ; the folly of anxious research into an unknown 
future ; the vanity of riches and of restless ambition ; the 
happiness of a golden mediocrity in fortune, and an 
equable mind in the vicissitudes of life. But these itera- 
tions of ideas, constituting the body of his ethics, if faulty 
— inasmuch as the ultima linea of his range may therein 
be too sharply defined — are the inseparable consequence of 
the most beautiful qualities of his genius. They mark the 
consistent unity and the sincere convictions of the man — 
they show how much his favourite precepts are part and 
parcel of his whole moral and intellectual organisation. 



causes of Horace's popularity. 311 

Whether conversing in his Satires, philosophising in his 
Epistles, giving free play to invention in his Odes — still 
he cannot help nttering and re-nttering ideas the combina- 
tion of which constitutes himself. And as the general 
effect of these ideas is soothing, so their prevalence in his 
verse has a charm of repose similar to the prevalence of 
green in the tints of nature : we greet the constant recur- 
rence of the soft familiar colour with a sensation of pleasure 
even in its quiet monotony. 

Perhaps in most writers who have in a pre-eminent 
degree the gift of charm, there is, indeed, a certain 
fondness for some peculiar train of thought, the repetition 
of which gains the attraction of association. We should be 
disappointed, in reading such writers, if we did not find 
the ideas which characterise them, and for which we have 
learned to seek and to love them, coming up again and 
again like a refrain in music. It is so with some of our 
own poets — Goldsmith, Cowper, and Byron — who, alike in 
nothing else, are alike in the frequent recurrence of the 
ideas which constitute the characteristic colourings of their 
genius, and who, in that recurrence, deepen their spell over 
their readers. 

I believe, then, that the attributes thus imperfectly 
stated are among the principal constituent elements of 
Horace's indisputable charm, and of a popularity among 
men of various minds which extends over a wider circle 
than perhaps any other ancient poet commands, Homer 
alone excepted. It is a popularity not diminished by the 
limits imposed on the admiration that accompanies it. Even 
those critics who deny him certain of the higher qualities 
of a lyrical poet, do not love him less cordially on account 
of the other qualities which they are pleased to accord to 
him. It is commonly enough said that, either from his 
own deficiencies or those of the Latin language, he falls 
far short of the Greek lyrical poets in fire, in passion, in 
elevation of style, in varied melodies of versification. 
Granted : but judging by the scanty remains of those 
poets which time has spared, we find evidence of no one — 
unless it be Alcaeus, and conjecturing what his genius 
might have been as a whole less by the fragments it has 
left than by Horace's occasional imitations — no one who 
combines so many excellences, be they great or small, as 



312 causes of Horace's popularity. 

even a very qualified admirer must concede to Horace ; no 
one who blends so large a knowledge of the practical 
work-day world with so delicate a fancy, and so graceful a 
perception of the poetic aspects of human life ; no one who 
has the same alert quickness of movement U/ from gay to 
grave, from lively to severe ; " no one who unites the same 
manly and high-spirited enforcement of hardy virtues, 
temperance and fortitude, devotion to friends and to the 
native land, with so pleasurable and genial a tempera- 
ment ; no one who adorns so extensive an acquaintance 
with metropolitan civilisation by so many lovely pic- 
tures of rural enjoyment ; or so animates the description 
of scenery by the introduction of human groups and 
images, instilling, as it were, into the body of outward 
nature the heart and the thought of man. So that where 
his genius may fail in height as compared with Pindar, 
or in the intensity of sensuous passion as compared with 
Sappho, it compensates by the breadth to which it 
extends its survey, and over which it diffuses its light 
and its w 7 armth. 



Of all classical authors Horace is the one who has most 
attracted the emulation of editors and commentators* 
Students, indeed, have some reason to complain of the 
very attempts made by learning and ingenuity to deter- 
mine his text and interpret his meaning. No sooner have 
they accustomed themselves to one edition than a new one 
appears to challenge the authority they had deferred to, 
and disturb the reading they had accepted. Paraphrases 
and translations are still more numerous than editions and 
commentaries. There is scarcely a man of letters who has 
not at one time or other versified or imitated some of the 
Odes ; and scarcely a year passes without a new translation 
of them all. No doubt there is a charm in the proverbial 
difficulty of dealing with Horace's modes of expression ; 
but perhaps the true cause which invites translators to 
encounter that difficulty has been sufficiently intimated in 
the preceding remarks — viz., the comprehensive range of 
his sympathy with human beings. He touches so many 
sides of character, that on one side or the other he is sure 
to attract us all, and we seek to clothe in his words some 



causes of Horace's popularity. 313 

isbed feeling or sentiment of our own. Be that as it 
, an unusual degree of indulgence has by tacit consent 
. accorded to new translations from Horace. Readers 
unacquainted with the original are disposed to welcome 
every fresh attempt to make the Venusian Muse express 
herself in familiar English ; and Horatian scholars feel 
an interest in examining how each succeeding translator 
grapples with the difficulties of interpretation which have 
been, as many of them still are, matters of conjecture and 
dispute to commentators the most erudite, and critics the 
most acute. 

May a reasonable share of such general indulgence be 
vouchsafed to that variety in the mode of translation of 
which I now propose to hazard the experiment, 

I have long been of opinion that the adoption of other 
rhymeless measures than that to which we at present con- 
fine the designation of blank verse would be attended with 
especial advantage in translations from the classical poets, 
and, indeed, in poems founded upon Hellenic and Roman 
myths, and treated in the classical character and spirit. 
In that belief I began many years ago these translations 
from Horace, and more recently submitted to the public 
the experiment of the metres employed in the " Lost Tales 
of Miletus.''* I will not lengthen this preface by any de- 
finition of the general rhythmical principles upon which, 
in my judgment, lyrical measures that, taking the form of 
strophe or stanza, dispense with rhyme, should be invented 
and framed. Should any writer be tempted hereafter to 
repeat and improve on my experiments, he will easily de- 
tect the laws I have laid down for myself, and adopt, 
modify, or reject them, according to his own idiosyncrasies 
of ear and taste. 

So far as these translations are concerned, it will be 
seen that I have shunned any attempt to transfer to our 
own language the exact form of the original metres. 
I have rather sought to construct measures in accord- 
ance with the character of English prosody, akin to the 
prevalent spirit of the original, and of compass sufficient 
to allow a general adherence to the rule of translating 
line by line, or at least strophe by strophe, without need- 
less amplification on the one hand, or harsh contraction 
on the other. 



314 CAUSES OF HOE ACE'S POPULARITY. 

The same licence of diversifying the metres employee 
translation, according as the prevalent spirit of the 
demands lively and sportive, or serious and digni: 
expression, in which most of the rhyming translators un- 
scrupulously indulge, must be conceded to him who re- 
jects, rhyme from his version. We have no English 
metres, rhymed or unrhymed, so supple for the expressing 
of opposing sentiment or emotion as are the Alcaic, and 
even the Sapphic, in the hands of Horace ; and if we 
desire to be true to the spirit of Horace, we have no 
option but to vary his form, and not always preserve for 
loose and sprightly movement the same mechanical ar- 
rangement of syllables which accords with the march of 
the serried and the grave. 

For the Alcaic stanza I have chiefly employed two 
different forms of rhythm ; the one, which is of more 
frequent recurrence, as in Ode ix. — the other, as in Odes 
xxxiv.-xxxv., Book I. But in both these forms of rhythm 
I have made occasional variations. 

For the Sapphic metre, in which Horace has composed 
more odes than in any other except the Alcaic, I have 
avoided, save in one or two of the shorter poems, any 
imitation of the chime rendered sufficiently familiar by 
Canning's " Knife-grinder, " not only because, in the mind 
of an English reader, it is associated with a popular bur- 
lesque, but chiefly because an English imitation of the 
Latin rhythm, with a due observance of the trochee in the 
first three lines of the stanza, has in itself an unpleasant 
and monotonous sing-song. In my version of the Sapphic 
I have chiefly employed two varieties of rhythm : for the 
statelier odes, our own recognised blank verse in the first 
three lines, usually, though not always, with a dissyllabic 
termination; and, in the fourth line, a metre analogous in 
length and cadence to the fourth line of the original, 
though, of course, without any attempt at preserving the 
Latin quantity of dactyl and spondee. In fact, as 
Dr. Kennedy has truly observed, the spondee is not attain- 
able in our language, except by a very forced effort of pro- 
nunciation. That which passes current as an English 
spondee is really a trochee. For the lighter odes of the 
Sapphic metre, a more sportive or tripping measure is 
adopted. 



CAUSES OF HOE ACE ? S POPULARITY. 315 

I must leave my versions of the other metres which 
Horace has less frequently employed to speak for them- 
selves. 

In the Latin version, placed side by side with the 
English, I have generally adopted the text of Orelli. The 
rare instances in which I have differed from it for that of 
another editor are stated in the notes. For the current 
punctuation — which in Orelli, and indeed in Macleane, is 
so sparse as not unfrequently to render the sense obscure to 
those not familiarly intimate with it — I am largely in- 
debted to the admirable edition of Mr. Yonge. The modes 
of spelling preferred by Bitter and Mr. Munro as more 
faithful transcripts of the ancient MSS., involve questions 
of great interest to professional scholars, but are as yet 
too unfamiliar to the general reader for adoption in a 
text especially designed for his use, and annexed to the 
English translation for the convenient facilities of reference 
and comparison. 

My objects in the task I have undertaken have com- 
pelled me to add in some degree the labour of a critic to 
that of a translator. The introductions prefixed and the 
notes appended to the several odes are designed not only 
to serve for readers unacquainted with the original, but to 
bring, in a terse and convenient form, before such students 
of Horace as may not have toiled through the many and 
often conflicting commentaries of the best editors, the 
opinions of eminent authorities upon difficult or disputed 
questions of interpretation. In my notes will be seen the 
extent to which I am indebted not only to Dillenburger, 
Orelli, Bitter, but to our own recent English editors, 
Macleane and Yonge — and, on certain points of con- 
troverted interpretation, to Mr. Munro' s erudite and 
valuable introduction to the beautiful edition illustrated 
from antique gems, by Mr. King. 

The majority of critics concur in the doctrine that all 
the Odes in Horace, differing in this respect from the 
Epodes, consist of stanzas in four lines, as the Alcaic and 
Sapphic do. This opinion has been ably controverted by 
Bitter. Munro declines either to affirm or deny it. But 
conformably to the general opinion, I have treated, and s@ 
translated, the Odes as quatrains, with four exceptions, 
for which I subjoin my reasons. 



316 causes of hobace's popularity. 

Odes i. Book L, xxx. Book III., and viii. Book IV., are 
in the same metre, and the only ones that are ; but Ode viii. 
Book IV. consists of thirty-four lines, and cannot there- 
fore be reduced to quatrain stanzas ; and the supposition 
that two verses required for such subdivision have been 
lost — no evidence of such loss appearing in the oldest 
MSS. or being intimated by the early commentators — is a 
hazardous basis on which to rest the theory that the poem 
must have been originally composed in quatrain. It is also 
to be observed that Ode i. Book I. so little adapts itself to 
the division of four-line stanzas with a suitable pause, that 
Mr. Tonge follows Stallbaum in printing the first two 
lines as prefatory to the rest, and the last two lines as the 
complement of the stanza. But it is a somewhat bold 
proceeding, for the sake of establishing an arbitrary sys- 
tem, thus to cut a stanza in half, placing one half at the 
beginning and the other half at the end of a poem ; nor 
does the arrangement entirely effect the object aimed at, 
if, as Macleane and Munro contend, a full stop should be 
placed at the end N of the fifth line — " nobilis." Even the 
remaining ode in this metre — Ode xxx. Book III. — does 
not readily flow into quatrain, the pause not occurring at 
the fourth and eighth lines, but at the fifth and ninth. I 
have not, therefore, in my translation, divided these three 
odes into stanzas. Lastly, I have followed Dillenburger, 
Orelli, Macleane, Munro, in the arrangement of Ode xii. 
Book III. as a stanza of three lines, instead of adopting 
the quatrain arrangement of Kirchner, to be found in the 
excursus of Orelli, and favoured by Mr. Yonge. 

The Secular Hymn I have printed in its proper chrono- 
logical place, between Books III. and IV. 

I concur in the reasons which have led recent editors to 
reject the headings to the Latin version, which are found 
in the MSS. ; but I have given headings to the translation, 
for the convenience of reference which they afford to 
English readers. 

It remains for me only gratefully to acknowledge my 
obligations to the distinguished scholars who have per- 
mitted me to consult them in the course of this trans- 
lation. Many years ago I submitted the earliest specimens 
of my attempts to my valued friend Dr. Kennedy. His 
encouragement induced me to proceed with my under- 



CAUSES OF HOE ACES POPULARITY. 317 

taking, while bis advice and suggestions enabled me 
materially to improve it. With no less liberal a kindness 
another friend, the Rev. F. W. Farrar, has permitted me 
to encroach on his time, and profit by his taste and his 
learning. Much more could I say in gratitude, as to the 
services so generously rendered me by these eminent 
scholars, were it not for the fear that I might seem in so 
doing to shelter my defects and shortcomings under the 
authority of their names. It is enough for me to acknow- 
ledge that to them must be largely ascribed any merit 
which may be accorded to my labours, and that without 
their aid my faults would have been much more numerous 
and grave. 



ON ART IN FICTION. 



Art is that process by which we give to natural 
materials the highest excellence they are capable of re- 
ceiving. 

We estimate the artist, not only in proportion to the 
success of his labours, but in proportion to the intellectual 
faculties which are necessary to that success. Thus a 
watch by Breguet is a beautiful work of art, and so is a 
tragedy by Sophocles : — The first is even more perfect of 
its kind than the last, but the tragedy reqnires higher in- 
tellectual faculties than the watch, and we esteem the 
tragedian above the watchmaker. 

The excellence of art consists in the fitness of the object 
proposed with the means adopted. Art carried to its per- 
fection would be the nnion of the most admirable object 
with the most admirable means : in other words it would 
require a greatness in the conception correspondent to the 
genius in the execution. But as mechanical art is sub- 
jected to more definite and rigorous laws than intellectual 
art, so, in the latter, a comprehensive critic regards the 
symmetry of the whole with large indulgence towards 
blemishes in detail. We contemplate mechanical art with 
reference to its utility — intellectual art with reference to 
its beauty. A single defect in a watch may suffice to 
destroy all the value of its construction ; — a single blemish 
in a tragedy may scarcely detract from its effect. 

In regarding any work of art, we must first thoroughly 
acquaint ourselves with the object that the artist had in 
view. Were an antiquarian to set before us a drawing, 
illustrative of the costume of the Jews in the time of 
Tiberius, we should do right to blame him if he presented 
to our eye goblets in the fashion of the fifteenth century ; 
but when Leonardo da Vinci undertook the sublime and 
moving representation of the Last Supper, we feel that 

* [Original appeared in 1838, in two instalments, headed " The Critic," 
No. I. and No. II. in the first of the seven volumes of The Monthly Chronicle, 
published by the Messrs. Longman,] 



ON ART IN FICTION. 319 

his object is not that of an antiquary ; and we do not re- 
gard it as a blemish that the Apostles are seated upright 
instead of being recumbent, and that the loaves of bread 
are those of an Italian baker. Perhaps, indeed, the picture 
affected the spectators the more sensibly from their 
familiarity "with the details ; and the effect of art on the 
whole was only heightened by a departure from correctness 
in minutiae. So, in an anatomical drawing that professed 
to give the exact proportions of man ; we might censure 
the designer if the length of the limbs were dispropor- 
tioned to the size of the trunk : but when the sculptor of 
the Apollo Belvedere desired to convey to the human eye 
the ideal of the God of Youth, the length of the limbs 
contributed to give an additional and superhuman lightness 
and elasticity to the form ; and the excellence of the art 
was evinced and promoted by the sacrifice of mechanical 
accuracy in detail. It follows, therefore, that Intellectual 
Art and Technical Correctness are far from identical ; that 
one is sometimes proved by the disdain of the other. And, 
as this makes the distinction between mechanical and in- 
tellectual art, so is the distinction remarkable in proportion 
as that intellectual art is exercised in the highest degree- ; 
in proportion as it realises the Ideal. For the Ideal con- 
sists not in the imitation, but the exaltation, of Nature ; 
and we must accordingly inquire, not how far it resembles 
what we have seen so much as how far it embodies what 
we can imagine. 

It is not till we have had great pictures, that we can lay 
down the rules of painting ; — it is not till we have had 
great writers in a particular department of intellect, that 
we can sketch forth a code of laws for those who succeed 
them : For the theory of art resembles that of science ; 
we must have data to proceed upon, and our inductions 
must be drawn from a vast store of experiments. 

Prose fictions have been cultivated by modern writers of 
such eminence, and now form so wide and essential a part 
of the popular literature of Europe, that it may not be an 
uninteresting or an useless task to examine the laws by 
which the past may be tested, and the labours of future 
students simplified and abridged. 



320 ON ART IN FICTION. 



PROSE FICTIONS. 

The novelist has three departments for his art — Manners, 
Passions, Character. 

Manners. 

The delineation of manners embraces both past and 
present ; the Modern and Historical Romance. 

The Historical. 

We have a right to demand from the writer who pro- 
fesses to illustrate a former age a perfect acquaintance 
with its characteristics and spirit. At the same time, as 
he intends rather to interest than instruct ns, his art will 
be evinced in the illustrations he selects, and the skill with 
which they are managed. He will avoid all antiquarian 
dissertations not essentially necessary to the conduct of his 
tale. If, for instance, his story should have no connection 
with the mysteries of the middle ages, he will take care 
how he weary us with an episodical description that 

anges his character from that of a narrator into that of 
a lecturer. In the tale of " Notre Dame de Paris," by 
Victor Hugo, the description of the Cathedral of Notre 
Dame is not only apposite, bnt of the deepest interest ; 
for the cathedral is, by a high effort of art, made an abso- 
lute portion of the machinery of the tale. But the long 
superfluous description of the spectacle with which the 
story opens is merely a parade of antiquarian learning, 
because the Scholars and the Mysteries have no propor- 
tionate bearing whatever in the future development of 
the tale. 

The usual fault of the historical novelist is over minute- 
ness in descriptions of dress and feasts, of pageants and 
processions. Minuteness is not accuracy. On the con- 
trary, the more the novelist is minute, the more likely he 
is to mar the accurate effect of the whole, either by 
wearisome tameness or some individual error. 

An over antiquated phraseology is a common and a most 
inartistical defect : whatever diction the delineator of a 
distant age employs can never be faithful to the language 
of the time, for, if so, it would be unintelligible. So, in 



OX ART IN FICTION. 321 

the German novels that attempt a classical subject, there 
is the prevalent vice of a cold imitation of a classic epis- 
tolary style. It is the very attempt at resemblance that 
destroys the illusion, as it is by the servility of a copy that 
we are most powerfully reminded of the difference between 
the copy and the original. The language of a former 
time should be presented to us in the freest and most 
familiar paraphrase we can invent. Thus the mind is 
relieved at once from the task of forming perpetual com- 
parisons, and surrenders itself to the delusion the more 
easily, from the very candour with which the author 
makes demand on its credulity. In selecting a particular 
epoch, for illustration, an artistical author will consider 
well what is the principal obstacle in the mind of his 
audience to the reception of his story. For instance, if he 
selects a story of ancient Greece, the public will be predis- 
posed to anticipate a frigid pedantry of style, and delinea- 
tions of manners utterly different from those which are 
familiar to us now. The author will, therefore, agreeably 
surprise the reader, if he adopt a style as familiar and 
easy which a Greek would have used in common conversa- 
tion ; and show the classical spirit that pervades his 
diction, by the grace of the poetry, or the lightness of the 
wit, with which he can adorn his allusions and his 
dialogue. Thus, the very learning he must evince will 
only be but incidental and easy ornament. On the other 
hand, instead of selecting such, specimens and modifications 
of human nature as are most different from, and unfamiliar 
to the sympathies of modern times, he will rather prefer to 
appeal to the eternal sentiments of the heart, by showing 
how closely the men of one age resemble those of another. 
His hero, his lover, his epicure, his buffoon, his miser, his 
boaster, will be as close to the life as if they were drawn 
from the streets of London. The reader will be interested 
to see society different, yet men the same ; and the Man- 
ners will be relieved from the disadvantage of unfamiliarity 
by an entire sympathy with the humours they mark, or the 
passions on which they play. 

Again, if the author propose to carry his readers to the 
time of Richard I., or of Elizabeth, he will have to en- 
counter a universal repugnance from the thought of an imi- 
tation of " Ivanhoe " or " Kenil worth*" An author who was, 

Y 



322 ON ART IN FICTION. 

nevertheless, resolved to select such a period for his narra- 
tive would, accordingly, if an artist of sufficient excellence, 
avoid, with care, touching upon any of the points which 
may suggest the recollection of Scott. He would deeply 
consider all the features of the time, and select those ne- 
glected by his predecessor ; — would carefully note all tha 
deficiencies of the author of " Kenilworth," and seize at 
once upon the ground which that versatile genius omitted 
to consecrate to himself. 

To take the same epoch ; the same characters, even the 
same narrative, as a distinguished predecessor, is perfectly 
allowable ; and if successful, a proof at once of originality 
and skill. But if you find the shadow of the previous 
work flinging itself over your own, — if you have not 
thoroughly escaped the influence of the first occupant of 
the soil — you will only invest your genius to unnecessary 
disadvantage, and build edifices, however graceful and 
laboured, upon the freehold of another. 

In novels devoted to the delineation of existing manners, 
the young author will be surprised to find, that exact and 
unexaggerated fidelity has never been the characteristic of 
the greatest novelists of their own time. There would be, 
indeed, something inane and trifling, or mean and vulgar, 
in Dutch copies of the modern still life. We do not 
observe any frivolity in Walter Scott, when he describes 
with elaborate care the set of the ruffle, the fashion of the 
cloak of Sir Walter Raleigh, nor when he catalogues all 
the minutiae of the chamber of Rowena. But to intro- 
duce your hero of " May Fair," with an exact portraiture 
of the colour of his coat or the length of his pantaloons, 
to item all the commodes and fauteuils of a Lady Caro- 
line or Frances, revolts our taste as an effeminate attention 
to trifles. 

In humbler life the same rule applies with equal 
strength. We are willing to know how Gurth was 
dressed or Esmeralda lodged, but we do not require the 
same minuteness in describing the smock frock of a la- 
bourer, or the garret of the girl who is now walking upon 
stilts for a penny. The greatest masters of the novel of 
modern life have usually availed themselves of Humour as 
the illustration of manners ; and have, with a deep and 
true, but perhaps unconscious, knowledge of art, pushed 



ON ART IN FICTION. 323 

the humour almost to the verge of caricature. For as the 
Serious Ideal requires a certain exaggeration in the pro- 
portions of the Natural, so also does the Ludicrous. Thus 
Aristophanes, in painting the h amours of his time, resorts 
to the most poetical extravagance of machinery, and calls 
the clouds in aid of his ridicule of philosophy, or summons 
frogs and gods to unite in his satire on Euripides. The 
Don Quixote of Cervantes never lived, nor, despite the 
vulgar belief, ever could have lived, in Spain ; but the 
art of the portrait is in the admirable exaltation of the 
Humorous by means of the Exaggerated. With more 
qualification the same may be said of Parson Adams, of 
Sir Roger de Coverley, and even of the Vicar of Wake- 
field. 

Where the author has not adopted the Humorous as the 
best vehicle for the delineation of manners, he has some- 
times artfully removed the scene from the country that he 
seeks to delineate, so that he might place his portraitures 
at a certain, and the most advantageous, distance from the 
eye. Thus, Le Sage obtains his object, of a consummate 
and masterly picture of the manners of his own land, 
though he has taken Spain for the theatre of the adven- 
tures of Gil Bias ; and Swift has transferred all that his 
experience or his malice could narrate of the intrigues of 
courts, the chimeras of philosophy, the follies and vices of 
his nation and his time, to the regions of Lilliput and 
Laputa. 

It may be observed, that the delineation of manners is 
usually the secondary object of a novelist of high power. 
To a penetrating mind manners are subservient to the 
illustration of views of life or the consummation of original 
character. In a few years the mere portraiture of manners 
is obsolete. It is the knowledge of what is durable in 
human nature that alone preserves the work from decay. 
Lilly and Shakspeare alike painted the prevailing and 
courtly mannerism of their age. The Euphues rests upon 
ourselves — Don Arinado will delight us as long as pedantry 
exists. 



y2 



324 ON ART IN FICTION. 

Character. 

An author once said, " Give me a character, and I will 
find the play ; " and, if we look to the most jDopular novels 
we shall usually find, that where one reader speaks of the 
conduct of the story, a hundred readers will speak of the 
excellence of some particular character. 

An author, before resolving on the characters he designs 
to portray, will do well to consider maturely, first, what 
part they are designed to play in his performance ; and, 
secondly, what is the precise degree of interest which he 
desires them to create. Having thus considered and duly 
determined, he will take care that no other character in 
the work shall interfere with the effect each is intended to 
produce. Thus, if his heroine is to be drawn gentle and 
mild, no second heroine, with the same attributes, should 
distract the attention of the reader, a rule which may seem 
obvious but which is usually overlooked. When the 
author feels that he has thoroughly succeeded in a prin- 
cipal and predominant character, he will even sacrifice 
others, nominally more important, to increase the interest 
of the figure in the foreground. Thus, in the tale of 
" Ivanhoe," Rowena, professedly the heroine, is very pro- 
perly sacrificed to Rebecca. The more interesting the 
character of Rowena, the more pathetic the position she 
had assumed, the more we should have lost our compassion 
and admiration of the Jewess, and the highest merit of the 
tale, its pathos, would have been diminished. The same 
remark will apply to the Clementina and Harriet Byron of 
Richardson. 

The author. will take care not to crowd his canvas. He 
will select as few characters as are compatible with the 
full agency of his design. Too many plants in a narrow 
compass destroy each other. He will be careful to indivi- 
dualise each ; but if aspiring to the highest order of art, 
he will yet tone down their colours by an infinite variety 
of shades. The most original colours are those most 
delicately drawn, where the individual peculiarity does not 
obtrude itself naked and unrelieved. It was a very cheap 
purchase of laughter in Sir Walter Scott, and a mere 
trick of farce, which Shakspeare and Cervantes would 
have disdained, to invest a favourite humorist with some 



OX ART IN FICTION. 323 

cant phrase, which he cannot open his mouth without dis- 
gorging. The "Prodigious" of Dominie Sampson, the 
11 My Father the Baillie," of Nichol Jarvie, the " Provant " 

of Major Dalgettie, the "Dejeuner at Tillietudlem," of Lady 
Margaret Bellenden, &c, all belong to one source of 
humour, and that the shallowest and most hackneyed. If 
your tale spread over a considerable space of time, you 
will take care that your readers may note the change of 
character which time has necessarily produced. You will 
quietly show the difference between the boy of eighteen 
and the man of forty; you will connect the change in 
the character with the influence of the events you have 
narrated. In the novel of " Anastasius," this article of 
composition is skilfully and delicately mastered, more so 
than in " Gil Bias." 

If you bend all your faculties to the development of 
some single character, and you make us sensible that such 
is your object, the conduct of your story becomes but a 
minor consideration. Shakspeare probably cared but little 
whether the fencing scene in " Hamlet " was the best catas- 
trophe he could invent ; he took the incidents of the story 
as he found them, and lavished his genius on the workings 
of the mind, to which all external incidents on this side 
the grave had become trivial and uninfluential — weary, 
unprofitable, stale. 

It must rest entirely on the nature of the interest you 
desire it to effect, whether you seek clearly to place before 
us, or dimly to shadow out, each particular character. If 
you connect your hero with supernatural agency, if you 
introduce agents not accounted for by purely human 
means, if you resort to the Legendary and Mysterious, for 
the interest you identify with any individual character, it 
may be most artistical to leave such a character vague, 
shadow}-, and half-incompleted. Thus, very skilfully is 
the Master of Ravenswood, over whose head hang 
ominous and weird predictions, left a less distinct and 
palpable creation, than the broad-shouldered and much- 
eating heroes whom Scott usually conducts through a 
labyrinth of adventures to marriage with a wealthy 
Ariadne. 

The formation of characters, improbable and grotesque, 
is not very compatible with a high conception of art, unless 



826 ON ART m FICTION. 

tlie work be one that so avowedly deals with beings dif- 
ferent from those we mix with, that onr imagination is 
prepared as to the extent of the demand upon its faith. 
Thus, when Shakspeare introduces us at once to the En- 
chanted Island, and we see the wand of the magician, and 
hear the song of Ariel, we are fully prepared to consider 
Caliban a proper inhabitant of such a soil ; or when the 
" Faust " opens with the chorus of angels, and the black dog 
appears in the chamber of the solitary student, the imagi- 
nation finds little difficulty in yielding assent to the 
vagaries of the witches, and the grotesque diablerie of the 
Hartz Mountains ; but we are wholly unprepared to find a 
human Caliban in the bell-ringer of a Parisian cathedral ; 
and we see no reason why Quasimodo should not have 
been as well shaped as other people. The use of the gro- 
tesque in " The Abbot," where Sir Percy Shafto is killed 
and revived, is an absurdity which is as gross as can well 
be conceived. 

In the portraiture of evil and criminal characters lies 
the widest scope for an author profoundly versed in the 
philosophy of the human heart. In all countries, in all 
times, the delineation of crime has been consecrated to the 
highest order of poetry. For as the emotions of terror 
and pity are those which it falls to the province of the 
sublimest genius to arouse, so it is chiefly, though not 
solely, in the. machinations of guilt that may be found, the 
source of the one, and in the misfortunes, sometimes of the 
victim of the guilt, nay, sometimes of the guilty agent 
himself, that we arrive at the fountain of the softer 
passion. Thus, the murder of Duncan rouses our compas- 
sion, through our admission to all the guilty doubts and 
aspirations of Macbeth ; and our terror is of a far higher 
and more enthralling order, because it is reflected back 
upon us from the bared and struggling heart of the mur- 
derer, than it would have been if we had seen the physical 
death of the victim. It may be observed, indeed, that, in 
a fine tragedy, it is the preparation to the death that is to 
constitute the catastrophe, that usually most sensibly 
excites the interest of terror, and that the blow of the 
murderer and the fall of the victim is but a release to the 
suspense of fear, and changes the whole current of our 
emotions. But the grandest combination is when the 



OX ART IN FICTION. 327 

artist unite one person the opposite passions of terror 

and pitj r — 1 we feel at once the horror of the crime, 

jet compassi for the criminal. Tims, in the most 
stirring of ai' 1 fche ancient dramas, the moment that we 
discover that : lipus has committed the crimes from 
which we mo avolt, homicide and incest, is the very 
moment in which, to the deepest terror of the crimes is 
united the most intense compassion for the criminal. So 
again before the final catastrophe of the mystic fate of 
Macbeth, when evil predictions are working to their close, 
and we feel that his hour is come, Shakspeare has paused, 
to draw from the dark bosom of the fated murderer those 
moving reflections, "My way of life," &c, which steal 
from us insensibly our hatred of his guilt, and awaken a 
new and softer interest in the approaching consummation 
of the usurper's doom. Again, in the modern play of 
" Virginius," when the scene opens and discovers the 
avenging father upon the body of the murdered Appius, it 
is in Virginius, at once criminal and childless, that are 
concentrated our pity and our terror. 

In the portraiture of crime, however dark, the artist 
will take care to throw some redeeming light. The 
veriest criminal has some touch, and remnant of human 
goodness, and it is according as this sympathy between 
the outcast and ourselves is indicated or insinuated, that 
the author profanes or masters the noblest mysteries of his 
art. Where the criminal be one so resolute and hardened, 
so inexorable and preterhuman, in his guilt, that he passes 
the bounds of flesh and blood inconsistencies and sympa- 
thies, a great artist will bring forth intellectual quali- 
ties to balance our disgust at the moral. Thus, in 
"Richard III.," it is with a masterly skill that Shakspeare 
relieves us from the revolting contemplation of unmingied 
crime, by enlisting our involuntary and unconscious admi- 
ration on the side of the address, the subtle penetration 
into character, the affluent wit, the daring energy, the 
royal will, with which the ruthless usurper moves through 
the bloody scenes of his treachery. And at the last, it is, 
if not by a relic of human virtue, at least by a relic of 
huma?i weakness, by the working conscience, and the 
haunted pillow, that we are taught to remember that it is 
a man who sins and suffers, not a beast that ravages and 



328 ON ART IN FICTION. 

is slain. Still, despite all the subtle shadings in the 
character of Richard, we feel that the guilt is overdrawn — ■ 
that the dark spirit wants a moral as well as intellectual 
relief. To penetrating critics, it has always, therefore, 
been the most coarse of all the creations of Shak- 
speare, and will never bear a comparison, as a dissection of 
human nature, with the goaded and writhing wickedness 
of Macbeth. 

In the delineation of a criminal, the author will take 
car.e to show us the motives of the crimes — the influences 
beneath which the character has been formed. He will 
suit the nature of the criminal to the state of society in 
which he is cast. Thus he will have occasions for the 
noblest morality. By concentrating in one focus the 
vicious influences of any peculiar error in the social 
system, he will hold up a mirror to nations them- 
selves. 

As the bad man will not be painted as thoroughly and 
unredeemably bad, so he whom you represent as good, 
will have his foibles or infirmities. You will show 
where even the mainspring of his virtues sometimes calls 
into play a counter vice. Your just man will be some- 
times severe ; your generous man will be sometimes care- 
less of the consequences of generosity. It is true that, in 
both these applications of art, you will be censured by 
shallow critics and pernicious moralists. It will be said 
of you in the one case, " He seeks to interest us in a 
murderer, or a robber, an adulterer, or a parricide ; " it 
will be said of you in the other, " And this man whom he 
holds up to us as an example, whom he calls wise and 
good, is a rascal who indulges such an error, or commits 
such an excess." But no man can be an artist who does 
not prefer experience and human nature to all criticism, 
and for the rest he must be contented to stand on the 
same ground, or to have filled his urn from the same foun- 
tains, as Shakspeare and Boccaccio, as Goethe and 
Schiller, Fielding and Le Sage. If it be, however, neces- 
sary to your design to paint some character as almost 
faultless, as exempt from our common infirmities and 
errors, you w T ill act skilfully if you invest it with the 
attributes of old age. When all the experience of error 
has been dearly bought, when the passions are laid at 



02s ART IN FICTIOK 

rest, and the mind burns clear as tlic night deepens, virtue 
docs in fact become less and less wavering and imperfect. 
Bur youth without a fault would be youth without a 
passion : and such a portrait would make n ir of 

emulation, and arm against reverence and esteem all the 
jealousies of self-love. 

The Passioss. 

Delineation of passions is inseparable from the delinea- 
tion of character. A novel admirable in character, may, 
indeed, be drawn, in which the passions are but coldly and 
feebly shadowed forth. " Gil Bias " is an example. Bat 
either such novels are intended as representations of 
external life, not of the metaphysical operations of the 
inner man, or they deal with the humours and follies, not 
the grave and deep emotions, of our kind, and belong to 
the Comedy of Romance. 

But if a novel of character can be excellent without 
passion, it would be impossible to create a novel of pas- 
sion without character. The elementary passions them- 
selves, like the elements, are few : it is the modifications 
they take in passing through different bodies that give us 
so inexhaustible a variety of lights and shadows of loveli- 
ness and glory. 

The passion of Love is not represented by a series of 
eloquent rhapsodies, or even of graceful sentiments. It is 
represented in fiction by its effects on some particular 
character; the same with Jealousy, Avarice, Revenge, &c. 
Therefore, in a certain sense of the word, all representa- 
tions of passion in fiction may be considered typical. In 
Juliet it is not the picture of love solely and ab- 
stractedly, it is the picture of love in its fullest effect on 
youth. In Antony it is love as wild, and as frantic, and 
as self-sacrificing ; but it is love, not emanating froni the 
enthusiasm of youth, but already touched with something 
of the blindness and infirmity of dotage. 

In Macbeth it is not the mere passion of ambition that 
is portrayed, it is ambition operating on a man physically 
daring, and morally irresolute ; a man whom the darkest 
agencies alone can compel, and whom the fullest triumphs 
of success cannot reconcile to crime. So, if we review all 



330 OX ART IN FICTION. 

the passionate characters of Shakspeare, we shall find that 
the passion is individualised and made original by the 
mould in which the fiery liquid is cast. Nor is the lan- 
guage of that passion declamation upon the passion itself, 
but the revelation of the effect it produces on a single 
subject. It is accordingly in the perfect harmony that 
exists between the character and the passion, that the 
abstract and bodiless idea finds human force and cor- 
poreal interest. If you would place the passion before us 
in a new light, the character that represents it must be 
original. An artistical author, taking advantage of the 
multiform inconsistencies of human nature, will often give 
to the most hackneyed passion a thoroughly new form, by 
placing it in a character where it could least be looked for. 
For instance, should you desire to portray avarice, you 
will go but on worn-out ground, if you resort to Plautus 
and Moliere for your model. But if you find in history 
the record of a brilliant courtier, a successful general, 
marked and signalised by the vice of Harpagon, the vice 
itself takes a new hue, and your portraiture will be a new 
addition to our knowledge of the mysteries of our kind. 
Such a representation, startling, untouched, and truthful, 
might be taken from the character of the Duke of Marl- 
borough, the hero of Blenheim. In portraying the effect 
of a passion, the rarest art of the novelist is to give it its 
due weight, and no more. Thus, in love novels we usually 
find nothing but love ; as if in the busy and complicated 
life of man, there were no other spring to desire and 
action but 

" Love, love eternal love." 

Again, if an author portrays a miser, he never draws 
him otherwise than as a miser. He makes him, not the 
avaricious miser, but abstract avarice itself. Not so 
Shakspeare when he created Shylock. Other things, 
other motives occupy the spirit of the Jew besides his gold 
and his argosies ; he is a grasping and relentless miser, yet 
he can give up avarice to revenge. He has sublime pas- 
sions that elevate his mean ones. 

If your novel be devoted to love and its effects, you will 
act more consistently with the truths of life, if you throw 
the main interest of the passion in the heroine. In the 



ON ART IN FICTION. 3 SI 

hero you will increase our sense of the power of the pas- 
sion, if you show us all the conflicting passions with which 
in men it usually contends — ambition, or honour, or duty : 
the more the effect of love is shown by the obstacles it 
silently subdues, the more triumphant will be your success. 
You will recollect that in the novel, as in the drama, it is 
in the struggle of emotions that the science of the heart is 
best displayed ; and in the delineation of such struggles, 
there is ground little occupied hitherto by the great 
masters of English fiction. It was not in the province of 
Fielding or Smollett, and Scott but rarely indulges, and 
still more rarely succeeds, in the metaphysical operations 
of stormy and conflicting feelings. He rather seems to 
have made it a point of art to imitate the ancient painter, 
and throw a veil over passions he felt inadequate to ex- 
press. Thus, after the death and burial of Lucy, it is only 
by the heavy and unequal tread of Eavenswood, in his 
solitary chamber, that his agonies are to be conjectured. 
But this avoidance of the internal man, if constant and 
systematic, is but a clever trick to hide the want of power. 

The Sentiment. 

The Sentiment that pervades a book is often its most 
effective moral, and its most nniversal charm. It is a per- 
vading and indescribable harmony in which the heart of 
the author seems silently to address our own. Through 
creations of crime and vice, there may be one pervading 
sentiment of virtue ; through the humblest scenes, a senti- 
ment of power and glory. It is the sentiment of Words- 
worth of which his disciples speak, when they enlarge upon 
attributes of holiness and beauty, which detached pas- 
sages, however exquisite, do not suffice to justify. Of all 
the qnalities of fiction, the sentiment is that which we can 
least subject to the inquiries or codes of criticism. It 
emanates from the moral and predominant quality of the 
author — the perfume from his genius : and by it he un- 
consciously reveals himself. The sentiment of Shakspeare 
is in the strong sympathies with all that is human. In the 
sentiment of Swift, we see the reflection of a spirit dis- 
contented and malignant. Mackenzie, Goldsmith, Voltaire, 
Rousseau, betray their several characters as much in the 



33 2 ON ART IN FICTION. 

prevalent sentiments of their writings as if tli<; had made 
themselves the heroes. Of all writers of great genius, 
Shakspeare has the most sentiment, and, perhaps, Smollett 
and Defoe the least. The student will distinguish between 
a work of sentiment and a sentimental work. As the 
charm of sentiment in a fiction is that it is latent and in- 
definite, so the charm vanishes directly it becomes ob- 
truding and importunate. The mistake of Kotzebue, and 
many of the Germans, of Metastasio and a feeble and 
ephemeral school of the Italians, was in the confounding 
sentiment with, passion. 

Sentiment is capable of many classifications and sub- 
divisions. The first and finest is that touched upon — the 
sentiment of the whole work : a sentiment of beauty or of 
grandeur— of patriotism or of benevolence — of veneration 
of justice, or of piety. This may be perfectly distinct 
from the character or scenes portrayed : it evinces itself 
insensibly and invisibly : and we do not find its effect till 
we sum up all the effects that the work has bequeathed. 
The sentiment is, therefore, often incorporated and iden- 
tified with the moral tendency of the fiction. 

There is also a sentiment that belongs to style, and gives 
depth and colouring to peculiar passages. For instance, in 
painting a pastoral life in the heart of lonely forests, or by 
the side of unpolluted streams, the language and thoughts 
of the author glide into harmony with the images he 
creates ; and we feel that he has, we scarcely know by 
what art, penetrated himself and us with the Sentiment of 
Repose. 

A sentiment of this nature will be felt at once by the 
lovers of Spenser, and of Ariosto and Tasso. In the en- 
trance to the domains of Death, Milton breathes over the 
whole description the Sentiment of Awe. 

The Sentiments are distinct from the Passions : some- 
times they are most eloquent in the utter absence of pas- 
sion itself ; as the sentiment that pervades the poem of 
" The Castle of Indolence ; " — at other times they are the 
neighbours, the intervening shades, between one passion 
and another; as the Sentiment of a Pleasing Melancholy. 
Regret and Awe are sentiments ; Grief and Sorrow, 
passions. 

As there is a sentiment that belongs to description, so 



ON AllT IN FICTION. 333 

there are characters in which sentiment supplies the place 
of passion. The character of Jacques, in " As You Like 
It," is purely one of sentiment. Usually sentiment is, in 
character, most effective when united with humour, as in 
Uncle Toby and Don Quixote, and, to quote a living 
writer, some of the masterly creations of Paul de Kock. 
For the very delicacy of the sentiment will be most appa- 
rent by the contrast of what seems to us at first the oppo- 
site quality, as the violet we neglect in the flower-bed, 
enchants us in the hollow of a rock. 

In the subsequent part of this paper it is proposed to 
enter upon the construction of the fiction itself — the dis- 
tinctions between the Drama and the Novel — and the 
mechanism, conduct, and catastrophe of the different 
species of Invented Narrative. 

The Conception. 

A story may be well constructed, yet devoid of interest ; 
on the other hand, the construction may be faulty and the 
interest vivid. This is the case even with the drama. 
"Hamlet " is not so well constructed a story as the "Don 
Carlos " of Alfieri ; but there is no comparison in the 
degree of interest excited in either tragedy. Still, though 
we ought not to consider that excellence in the technical 
arrangement of incidents as a certain proof of the highest 
order of art, it is a merit capable of the most brilliant 
effects when possessed by a master. 

An exquisite mechanism in the construction of the mere 
story, not only gives pleasure in itself, but it displays 
other and loftier beauties to the best advantage. It is the 
setting of the jewels. 

It is common to many novelists to commence a work 
without any distinct chart of the country which they 
intend to traverse — to suffer one chapter to grow out of 
another, and invention to warm as the creation grows. 
Scott * has confessed to this mode of novel writing ; but 
Scott, with all his genius, was rather a great mechanist 

* See Mr. Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. v. p. 232 : " In writing I never 
could lay down a plan/' &c. Scott, however, has the candour to add, "I 
would not have young writers imitate my carelessness." 



334 OJST art m FICTION. 

than a great artist. His execution was infinitely superior 
to his conception. It may be observed, indeed, that his 
conceptions are often singularly poor and barren, compared 
with the vigour with which they are marked out. He 
conceives a story with the design of telling it as well as he 
can, but is wholly insensible to the high and true aim of 
art, which is rather to consider for what objects the story 
should be told. Scott never appears to say to himself, 
" Such a tale will throw a new light upon human passions, 
or add fresh stores to human wisdom : for that reason I 
select it. He seems rather to consider what picturesque 
effects it will produce, what striking scenes, what illustra- 
tions of mere manners. He regards the story with the eye 
of the property man, though he tells it with the fervour of 
the poet. It is not thus that the greatest authorities in 
fiction have composed. It is clear to us that Shakspeare, 
when he selected the tale which he proposed to render 
Xpwa « del — the everlasting possession of mankind, made it 
his first and paramount object to work out certain passions 
or affections of the mind, in the most complete and pro- 
found form. He did not so much consider how the in- 
cidents might be made most striking, as how the truths of 
the human heart might be made most clear. And it is a 
remarkable proof of his consummate art, that though in 
his best plays we may find instances in which the mere 
incidents might be made more probable, and the theatrical 
effects more vivid. We can never see one instance in such 
plays where the passion he desired to represent could have 
been placed in a broader light, or the character he designed 
to investigate could have been submitted to a minuter 
analysis. Weare quite sure that " Othello " and "Macbeth" 
were not written without the clear and deep and pre- 
meditative conception of the story to be told us. For with 
Shakspeare the conception itself is visible and gigantic 
from the first line to the last. So in the greatest works of 
Fielding a very obtuse critic may perceive that the author 
sat down to write in order to embody a design previously 
formed. The perception of moral truths urged him to the 
composition of his fictions. In Jonathan Wild, the finest 
prose satire in the English language, Fielding, before he 
set pen to paper, had resolved to tear the mask from False 
Greatness. In his conception of the characters and his- 



OX ART IN FICTION. 335 

tories of Blifil and Jones, he was bent on dethroning that 
popular idol — False Virtue. The scorn of hypocrisy in all 
grades, all places, was the intellectual passion of Fielding; 
and his masterpieces are the results of intense convictions. 
That many incidents never contemplated would suggest 
themselves as he proceeded — that the technical plan of 
events might deviate and vary according as he saw new 
modes of enforcing his aims, is unquestionable. But still 
Fielding always commenced with a plan, with a conception 
— with a moral end, to be achieved by definite agencies, 
and through the medium of certain characters preformed 
in his mind. If Scott had no preconcerted story when he 
commenced chapter the first of one of his delightful tales, 
it was because he was 'deficient in the highest attributes of 
art, viz., its philosophy and its ethics. He never seems to 
have imagined that the loftiest merit of a tale rests upon 
the effect it produces, not on the fancy, but on the intellect 
and the passions. He had no grandeur of conception, for 
he had no strong desire to render palpable and immortal 
some definite and abstract truth. 

It is a sign of the low state of criticism in this country, 
that Scott has been compared to Shakspeare. ISTo two 
writers can be more entirely opposed to each other in 
the qualities of their genius, or the sources to which they 
were applied. Shakspeare, ever aiming at the develop- 
ment of the secret man, and half disdaining the mechanism 
of external incidents. Scott, painting the ruffles and the 
dress and the features and the gestures — avoiding the 
movements of the heart — elaborate in the progress of the 
incident. Scott never caught the mantle of Shakspeare, 
but he improved on the dresses of his wardrobe, and 
threw artificial effects into the scenes of his theatres. 

Let us take an example : we will select one of the finest 
passages in Sir Walter Scott, a passage unsurpassed for 
its mastery over the Picturesque. It is that chapter in 
" Kenilworth 5 ' where Elizabeth has discovered Amy, and 
formed her first suspicions of Leicester. 

" Leicester was at this moment the centre of a splendid 
group of lords and ladies assembled together under a 
portico which closed the alley. The company had drawn 
together in that place to attend the commands ©f her 
Majesty when the hunting party should go forward, and 



336 ON ART IN FICTION. 

their astonishment niay be imagined, when^ instead of 
seeing Elizabeth, advance towards them with her usual 
measured dignity of motion, they beheld her walking so 
rapidly, that she was in the midst of them ere they were 
aware, and then observed, with fear and surprise, that her 
features were flushed betwixt anger and agitation, that 
her hair was loosened by her haste of motion, and that 
her eyes sparkled as they were wont when the spirit 
of Henry VIII. mounted highest in his daughter. Nor 
were they less astonished at the appearance of the pale, 
attenuated, half- dead, yet still lovely female, whom the 
queen upheld by main strength with one hand, while with 
the other she waived aside the ladies and nobles who 
pressed towards her, under the idea that she was taken 
suddenly ill. ' Where is my Lord of Leicester ? ' she said, 
in a tone that thrilled with astonishment all the courtiers 
who stood around. i Stand forth, my Lord of Leicester ! ' 
"If in the midst of the most serene day of summer, 
when all is light and laughing around, a thunder-bolt were 
to fall from the clear blue vault of heaven, and rend the 
earth at the very feet of some careless traveller, he could 
not gaze upon the smouldering chasm which so unex- 
pectedly yawned before him, with half the astonishment 
and fear which Leicester felt at the sight which so unex- 
pectedly presented itself. He had that instant been 
receiving, with a political affectation of disavowing and 
misunderstanding their meaning, the half-uttered, half- 
intimated congratulations of the courtiers upon the favour 
of the queen, carried apparently to its highest pitch during 
the interview of that morning ; from which most of them 
seemed to augur, that he might soon arise from their equal 
in rank to become their master. And now, while the 
subdued yet proud smile with which he disclaimed those 
inferences was yet curling his cheek, the queen shot into 
the circle, her passions excited to the uttermost, and sup- 
porting with one hand, and apparently without an effort, 
the pale and sinking form of his almost expiring wife, and 
pointing with the other to her half- dead features, demanded, 
in a voice that sounded to the ears of the astounded 
statesman, like the last dread trumpet-call that is to sum- 
mon body and spirit to the Judgment-seat, ' Knowest thou 
this woman ? ' " 



ON ART IN FICTION. 337 

The reader will observe tbat the whole of this splendid 
passage is devoted to external effects : the loosened hair 
and sparkling eyes of Elizabeth — the grouping of * the 
courtiers — the proud smile yet on the cheek of Leicester — 
the pale and sinking form of the wife. Only by external 
effects do we guess at the emotions of the agents. Scott 
is thinking of the costume and postures of the actors, not 
the passions they represent. Let us take a parallel pas- 
sage in Shakspeare, parallel, for in each a mind disturbed 
with jealousy is the real object placed before the reader. 
It is thus that Iago describes Othello after the latter has 
conceived his first suspicions. 

"Look where lie comes ! Not poppy nor mandragora, 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
"Which thou oV dst yesterday. 

Othello. Ha ! ha ! false to me ?" 

Here the reader will observe that there is no attempt at 
the Picturesque — no sketch of the outward man. It is only 
by a reference to the woe that kills sleep that we can form 
any notion of the haggard aspect of the Moor. So, if we 
compare the ensuing dialogue in the romance with that in 
the tragedy, we shall remark that Elizabeth utters only 
bursts of shallow passion, which convey none of the deep 
effects of the philosophy of jealousy, none of the senti- 
ments that " inform us what we are." But every sentence 
uttered by Othello penetrates to the very root of the pas- 
sion described : the farewell to fame and pomp, which 
comes from a heart that, finding falsehood in the prop it 
leaned on, sees the world itself a*nd all its quality and 
circumstance, crumbled away ; the burst of vehement in- 
credulity ; the sudden return to doubt ; the intense revenge 
proportioned to the intense love ; the human weakness that 
must seek faith somewhere, and, with the loss of Desdemona, 
casts itself upon her denouncer ; the mighty knowledge 
of the heart exhibited in those simple words to Iago, " I 
greet thy love ! " — compare all this with the mere words 
of Elizabeth, which have no force in themselves, but are 
made effective by the picturesque grouping of the scene, 
you will detect at once the astonishing difference between 
Shakspeare and Scott. Shakspeare could have composed 



338 ON ART IN FICTION. 

the most wonderful plays from the stories in Scott ; Scott 
could have written the most excellent stage directions to 
Mie plays of Shakspeare. 

If the novelist be contented with the secondary order of 
Art in Fiction, and satisfied if his incidents be varied, 
animating, and striking, he may write from chapter to 
chapter and grope his way to a catastrophe in the dark ; 
but if he aim at loftier and more permanent effects, he will 
remember that to execute grandly we must conceive nobly. 
He will suffer the subject he selects to lie long in his 
mind, to be revolved, meditated, brooded over until from 
the chaos breaks the light, and he sees distinctly the 
highest end for which his materials can be used, and the 
best process by which they can be reduced to harmony and 
order. 

If, for instance, he found his tale upon some legend, the 
author, inspired with a great ambition, will consider what 
will be, not the most vivid interest, but the loftiest and 
most durable order of interest, he can extract from the 
incidents. Sometimes it will be in a great truth elicited 
by the catastrophe, sometimes by the delineation of one or 
more characters, sometimes by the mastery over, and de- 
velopment of, some complicated passion. Having decided 
what it is he designs to work out, he will mould his story 
accordingly ; but before he begins to execute he will have 
clearly informed his mind of the conception that induces 
the work itself. 

Interest. 

No fiction can be first-rate if it fail to create Interest. 
But the merit of the fiction is not by any means pro- 
portioned to the degree of excitement it produces, but to 
the quality of the excitement. It is certainly some merit 
to make us weep ; but the great artist will consider from 
what sources our tears are to be drawn. We may weep as 
much at the sufferings of a beggar as at the agonies of 
Lear ; but from what sublime sympathies arise our tears 
for the last ! What commonplace pity will produce the 
first ! We may have our interest much more acutely excited 
by the " Castle of Udolpho " than by " Anastasius," but in 
the one, it is a melodramatic arrangement of hair-breadth 
escapes and a technical skill in the arrangement of other 



ON ART IN FICTION. 339 

mysteries — in the other it is the consummate knowledge 
of actual life that fascinates the eye to the page. It is 
necessary, then, that every novel should excite interest ; 
but one novel may produce a much more gradual, gentle, 
and subdued interest than another, and yet have infinitely 
more merit in the quality of the interest it excites. 

Terror and Horror. 

True art never disgusts. If in descriptions intended to 
harrow us, we feel sickened and revolted by the very 
power with which the description is drawn, the author has 
passed the boundary of his province, he does not appal — 
he shocks. Thus nothing is more easy than to produce a 
feeling of intense pain by a portrait of great bodily suffer- 
ing. The vulgarest mind can do this, and the mistaken 
populace of readers will cry, " See the power of this 
author." But all sympathy with bodily torture is drawn 
from our basest infirmities, all sympathy with mental 
torture from our deepest passions and our most spiritual 
nature. Horror is generally produced by the one, Terror 
by the other. If you describe a man hanging by a break- 
ing bough over a precipice — if you paint his starting eye- 
balls, his erect hair, the death-sweat on his brow, the 
cracking of the bough, the depth of the abyss, the sharp- 
ness of the rock, the roar of the cataract below, you may 
make us dizzy and sick with sympathy ; but you operate 
on the physical nerves, and our sensation is that of coarse 
and revolting pain. But take a moral abyss, CEdipus, for 
instance, on the brink of learning the awful secret which 
proclaims him an incestuous parricide. Show the splen- 
dour of his power, the depth of his wisdom, the loftiness 
of his pride, and then gradually, step by step, reveal the 
precipice on which he stands — and you work not on the 
body but the mind, you produce the true tragic emotion — 
terror. Even in this you must stop short of all that could 
make terror revolt while it thrills us. This Sophocles has 
done by one of those fine perceptions of nature which 
open the sublimest mysteries of art ; we are not allowed 
time to suffer our thoughts to dwell upon the incest and 
self-assault of CEdipus or upon the suicide of Jocasta, 
before, by the introduction of the children, terror melts into 

z 2 



310 ON AHT IN FICTION. 

pity, and the parricide son, assumes the new aspect of the 
broken-hearted father. A modern French writer, if he 
had taken the subject, would have disgusted us by details 
of the incest itself, or forced us from the riven heart to 
gaze upon the bloody and eyeless sockets of the blind 
king ; and the more he disgusted us, the more he would 
have thought he excelled the tragedian of Colonos. Such 
of the Germans, on the contrary, who follow the school of 
Schiller, will often stop as far short of the true boundaries 
of Terror as the French romanticists would go beyond it. 
Schiller held it a principle of art never to leave the com- 
plete and entire effects of a work of art, one of pain. 
According to him the pleasure of the art should exceed the 
sympathy with the suffering. He sought to vindicate this 
principle by a reference to the Greek drama, but in this he 
confounded the sentiments with which we moderns read 
the works of ^Eschylus and Sophocles, with the sentiments 
with which a Greek would have read them. No doubt, to 
a Greek religiously impressed with the truth and reality of 
the woes or the terror depicted, the " Agamemnon," of 
iEschylus, the CEdipus Tyrnanns of Sophocles, and the 
Medea of Euripides, would have left a far more unqualified 
and overpowering sentiment of awe and painful sympathy, 
than we now can entertain for victims, whom we believe 
to be shadows, to duties and destinies that we know to be 
chimeras. Were Schiller's rule universally adopted, we 
should condemn Othello and Lear. 

Terror may then be carried up to its full extent, pro- 
vided that it work upon us through the mind, not the 
body, and stop short of the reaction of recoil and disgust. 

Description. 

One of the greatest and most peculiar arts of the 
novelist is description. It is in this that he has a 
manifest advantage over the dramatic poet. The latter 
will rarely describe scenery, costumes, personals, for they 
ought to be placed before the eyes of the audience by 
the theatre and the actors. "When he does do so, it is 
generally understood by an intelligent critic to be an 
episode introduced for the sake of some poetical beauty 
which, without absolutely caiTying on the plot, increases 



ON ART IN FICTION. oil 

the agreeable and artistieal effect of the whole perform- 
ance. This is the case with the description of Dover 
Cliff in " Lear," or with that of the chasm which adorns 
by so splendid a passage the monstrous tragedy of " The 
Cenci." In the classical French theatre, as in the Greek, 
description, it is true, becomes an essential part of the 
play itself , since the catastrophe is thrown into description. 
Hence the celebrated picture of the death of Hippolvte 
in the " Phedre " of Racine — of the suicide of Hgemon 
in the " Antigone" of Sophocles. But it maybe doubted 
whether both Sophocles and his French imitator did not, 
in this transfer of action to words, strike at the very 
core of dramatic art, whether ancient or modern, for it 
may be remarked — and we are surprised that it has not 
been remarked before — that ^Eschylus preferred placing 
the tragedy before the eyes of the reader, and he who 
remembers the sublime close of the Prometheus, the 
storm, the lightning, the bolt, the shivered rock, and 
the mingled groans and threats of the Titan himself, 
must acknowledge that the effect is infinitely more 
purely tragical than it would have been if we had been 
told how it all happened by the Aggelos or Messenger. 
So in the " Agamemnon " of the same sublime poet, 
though we do not see the blow given, the scene itself, 
opening, places before us the murderess and the corpse. 
ISTo messenger intervenes, — no description is required for 
the action. " I stand where I struck him," says Clytem- 
nestra. " The deed is done ! " * 

But without recurring farther to the Drama of other 
nations, we may admit at once that, in our own, it is 
the received and approved rule that Action, as much as 
possible, should dispense with Description. With Nar- 
rative Fiction it is otherwise ; the novel writer is his 
own scene painter; description is as essential to him as 
canvas is to the actor, — description of the most various 
character. 

In this art none ever equalled Scott. In the com- 
parison we made between him and Shakspeare, we 
meant not to censure the former for indulging in what 

* Even Sophocles in one of his finest tragedies lias not scrupled to suffer 
the audience to witness the last moments of Ajax. 



342 ON ART IN FICTION. 

the latter stunned; each did that which his art required. 
We only lament that Scott did not combine with external 
description an equal, or, at least, not very inferior, skill in 
metaphysical analysis. Had he done so, he would have 
achieved all of which the novelist is capable. 

In the description of natural scenery the author will 
devote the greatest care to such landscapes as are meant 
for the localities of his principal events. 

There is nothing, for instance, very attractive in the 
general features of a common ; but if the author lead 
us through a common, on which, in a later portion of 
his work, a deed of a murder is to be done, he will strive 
to fix deeply in our remembrance the character of the 
landscape, the stunted tree, or the mantling pool, which he 
means to associate in our minds with an act of terror. 

If the duration of time in a fiction be limited to a 
year, the author may be enabled artfully to show us 
the progress of time by minute descriptions of the 
gradual change in the seasons. This is attempted to 
be done in the tale of " Eugene Aram ; " instead of tell- 
ing us when it is July and when it is October, the author 
of that fiction describes the signs and characteristics of 
the month, and seeks to identify our interest in the 
natural phenomena with the approaching fate of the 
hero, himself an observer and an artist of the " clouds 
that pass to and fro," and the " herbs that wither and 
are renewed." Again, in description, if there be any 
natural objects that will bear upon the catastrophe — if, 
for instance, the earthquake or the inundation be in- 
tended as an agent in the fate of those whose history 
the narrative relates, incidental descriptions of the state 
of the soil, frequent references to the river or the sea, 
will serve to make the elements themselves minister to 
the interest of the plot, and the final catastrophe will 
be made at once more familiar, yet more sublime, if we 
have been prepared and led to believe that you have 
from the first designed to invoke to your aid the awful 
agencies of Nature herself. Thus in the CEdipus at 
Colonos, the Poet at the very opening of the tragedy 
indulges in the celebrated description of the seats of 
the Dread Goddesses, because the place, and the deities 
themselves though invisible, belong yet more insensibly 



ON ART IN FICTION. 843 

to the crowning doom of the wanderer than any of the 
characters introduced. 

The description of feelings is also the property of the 
novelist. The dramatist throws the feelings into dialogue 
— the novelist goes at once to the human heart, and 
calmly scrutinises, assorts, and dissects them. Few indeed 
are the writers who have hitherto attempted this — the 
master mystery of the hierophant. Godwin has done so 
the most elaborately, Goethe the most skilfully. The first 
writer is indeed so minute, that he is often frivolous, — 
so lengthened, that he is generally tedious ; but the culti- 
vator of the art, and not the art itself, is to be blamed for 
such defects. 

A few words will often paint the precise state of emo- 
tion as faithfully as the most voluminous essay ; and in 
this department condensation and brevity are to be care- 
fully studied. Conduct us to the cavern, light the torch, 
and startle and awe us by what you reveal ; but if you 
keep us all day in the cavern, the effect is lost, and our 
only feeling is that of impatience and desire to get away. 

Arrangement of Incidents. 
Distinctions between the Novel and the Drama. 

In the arrangement of incidents the reader will carefully 
study the distinctions between the novel and the drama, 
— distinctions the more important because they are not at 
the first glance very perceptible. 

In the first place the incidents of a play must grow pro- 
gressively out of each other. Each scene should appear 
the necessary consequence of the one that precedes it. 
This is far from being the case with the novel : in the 
last it is often desirable to go back instead of forward, — to 
wind, to vary, to shift the interest from person to person 
— to keep even your principal hero, your principal actor, 
in the background. In the novel you see more of Frank 
Osbaldistone than you do of Rob Roy; but bring Rob 
Roy on the stage, and Frank Osbaldistone must recede at 
once into a fifth-rate personage. 

In our closets we should be fatigued with the incessant 
rush of events that we desire when we make one of a multi- 



84i ON ART IN FICTION. 

tude. Oratory and the drama in this resemble each other 
— that the things best to hear are not always the best to 
read. In the novel we address ourselves to the one person, 
— on the stage we address ourselves to a crowd; more 
rapid effects, broader and more popular sentiments, more 
condensed grasp of the universal passions, are required for 
the last. The calm advice which persuades our friend 
would only tire out the patience of the crowd. The man 
who writes a play for Covent Garden ought to remember 
that the Theatre is but a few paces distant from the 
Hustings : success at either place, the Hustings or the 
Theatre, wili depend upon a mastery over feelings not per- 
haps the most common-place, but the most commonly felt. 
If with his strong effects on the stage, the dramatic poet 
can, like Shakspeare, unite the most delicate and subtle 
refinement, like Shakspeare, he will be a consummate 
artist. But the refinement will not do without the effects. 
In the novel it is different : the most enchanting and per- 
manent kind of interest, in the latter, is often gentle, tran- 
quillising, and subdued. The novelist can appeal to those 
delicate and subtle emotions, whicii are easily awakened 
when we are alone, but which are torpid and unfelt in the 
electric contagion of popular sympathies. The most refin- 
ing among us will cease to refine when placed in the midst 
of a multitude. 

There is a great distinction between the plot of a novel 
and that of a play — a distinction which has been indicated 
by Goethe in the " Wilhelm Meister." The novel allows 
accident, the drama never. In the former your principal 
character may be throwm from his horse, and break his 
neck ; in the latter this would be a gross burlesque on the 
laws of the drama ; for in the drama the incidents must 
bring about the catastrophe ; in the novel there is no such 
necessity. Don Quixote at the last falls ill and dies in 
his bed ; but in order that he should fall ill and die in his 
bed, there was no necessity that he should fight windmills, 
or mistake an inn for a castle. If a novelist had taken 
for his theme the conspiracy of Fiesco, he might have ad- 
hered to history with the most perfect consistency to his 
art. In the history, as Fiesco, after realising his ambitious 
projects, is about to step into the ship, he slips from the 
plank ? and the weight of his armour drowns him. Tin's 



ON ART IN FICTION. 345 

is accident, and tins catastrophe would not only have been 
admissible in the novel, but would have conveyed, perhaps, 
a sublimer moral than any that fiction could invent. But 
when Schiller adapted Fiesco for the stage, he felt that 
accident was not admissible,* and his Fiesco falls by the 
hand of the patriot Verrina. The whole dialogue preced- 
ing the fatal blow is one of the most masterly adaptations 
of moral truth to the necessity of historical infidelity in 
European literature. 

In the " Bride of Lammermoor " Ravenswood is swal- 
lowed up by a quicksand. This catastrophe is singularly 
grand in romance ; it could not be allowable on the stage ; 
for this again is accident and not result. 

The distinctions, then, between the novel and the drama, 
so far as the management of incidents is concerned, are 
principally these : that in the one the interest must always 
progress — that in the other it must often go back and often 
halt ; that dealing with human nature in a much larger 
scale in the novel, you will often introduce events and 
incidents, not necessarily growing one out of the other, 
though all conducing to the completeness of the whole ; 
that in the drama you have more impatience to guard 
against — you are addressing men in numbers, not the 
individual man ; your effects must be more rapid and more 
startling : that in the novel you may artistically have 
recourse to accident for the "working out of your design, 
in the drama never. 

The ordinary faults of a play by the novelist, f and of a 

* " The nature of the Drama," observes Schiller in his preface to Fiesco, 
and in excuse for his corruption of history, " does not admit the hand of 
Chance." 

f " Why is it that a successful novelist has never been a successful play 
writer ? " This is a question that has been so often put that we have been 
frightened out of considering whether the premises involved in the question 
are true or not. It is something like the schoolboy question, "Why is a 
pound of feathers heavier than a pound of had ?" It is long before Tom or 
Jack ask — is it heavier ? Is it true that a successful novelist never has been 
a successful play writer? We will not insist on Goldsmith, whose comedy 
of "She Stoops to Conquer" and whose novel of the "Vicar of Wake- 
field " are alike among the greatest ornaments of our language. But was 
not Goethe a great play- writer and a great novelist ? Who will decide 
whether the palm in genius should be given to the " Tasso " or the " Wil- 
helm Meister" of that all-sided genius ? Is not the " Ghost Seer" a success- 
ful novel? Does it not afford the highest and most certain testimony of 
what Schiller could have done as a writer of narrative Ecti n, and are not 



346 ON ART IN FICTION. 

novel by the play writer, will serve as an illustration of the 
principles which have insensibly regulated each. The nove- 
list will be too diffuse, too narrative, and too refined in his 
effects for the stage ; the play writer will be too condensed, 
abrupt, and above all, too exaggerated, for our notions of 
the Natural when we are in the closet. Stage effect is a vice 
in the novel; but how can we expect a man trained to 
write for the stage to avoid what on the stage is a merit ? 
A certain exaggeration of sentiment is natural, and neces- 
sary for sublime and truthful effect, when we address 
numbers ; it would be ludicrous uttered to our friend in 
his easy-chair. If Demosthenes, urging a young Athenian 
to conduct himself properly, had thundered out * that sub- 
lime appeal to the shades of Marathon, Platea and Salamis, 
which thrilled the popular assembly, the young Athenian 
would have laughed in his face. If the dialogue of 
"Macbeth" were the dialogue of a romance on the same 
subject it would be equally good in itself, but it would seem 
detestable bombast. If the dialogue in Ivanhoe, which 
is matchless of its kind for fire and spirit, were shaped 
into blank verse, and cut up into a five act play, it would be 
bald and pointless. As the difference between the effective 
oration and the eloquent essay — between Pitt so great to 
hear, and Burke so great to read, so is the difference be- 

"Wallenstein" and "Fiesco" and "Don Carlos" great plays by the same 
author ? Are not " Canclide " and " Zadig " imperishable masterpieces in the 
art of the novelist ? Are not " Zaire " and " Mahomet " equally immortal ? 
The three greatest geniuses, that in modem times the continent has pro- 
duced, were both novelists and dramatists — equally great in each depart- 
ment. In France at this day Victor Hugo, who, with all his faults, is im- 
measurably the first writer in the school he has sought to found, is both the 
best novelist and the most powerful dramatist. That it has not happened 
oftener that the same man has achieved equal honour in the novel and the 
play is another question. But we might just as well ask why it has not 
happened oftener that the same man has been equally successful in tragedy 
and epic — in the ode and the didactic — why he who is sublime as a poet is 
often tame as a prose writer, and vice versa — why the same artist who 
painted the "Transfiguration" did not paint the " Last Day." Nature, 
circumstance, and education have not fitted many men to be great except in 
one line. And least of all are they commonly great in two lines, which, 
though seemingly close to each other, run in parallel directions. The more 
subtle the distinction between the novel and the play, the more likely are 
they to be overlooked by him who attempts both. It is the same with all 
departments of art : the closer the approximation of the boundaries, the 
more difficult the blending. 
* Dem. de Cour. 



ON ART IX FICTION. 347 

twcon the writing for the eye of one man, and the writing 
for the ears of three thousand. 



Mechanism and Conduct. 

The Mechanism and Conduct of the story ought to de- 
pond upon the nature of the preconceived design. Do you 
desire to work out some definite end, through the passions 
or through the characters you employ ? Do you desire to 
carry on the interest less through, character and passion 
than through incident ? Or, do you rather desire to enter- 
tain and instruct by a general and wide knowledge of 
living manners or human nature ? Or, lastly, would you 
seek to incorporate all these objects ? Are you faithful to 
your conception, will you be attentive to, and precise in 
the machinery you use ? In other words, your progress 
must depend upon the order of interest you mean to be 
predominant. It is by not considering this rule that critics 
have often called that episodical or extraneous, which is, 
in fact, a part of the design. Thus, in " Gil Bias," the 
object is to convey to the reader a complete picture of the 
surface of society : the manners, foibles, and peculiarities 
of the time ; elevated by a general, though not very pro- 
found, knowledge of the more durable and universal 
elements of human nature in the abstract. Hence the 
numerous tales and nouvelletes scattered throughout the 
work, though episodical to the adventures of Gil Bias, are 
not episodical to the design of Le Sage. They all serve to 
complete and furnish out the conception, and the whole 
would be less rich, and consummate in its effect without 
them. They are not passages which lead to nothing, but 
conduce to many purposes we can never comprehend, 
unless we consider well for what end the building was 
planned. So, if you wish to bring out all the peculiarities 
of a certain character, you will often seem to digress into 
adventures which have no palpable bearing on the external 
plot of incident and catastrophe. This is constantly the 
case with Cervantes and Fielding; and the critic who 
blames you for it, is committing the gross blunder of 
judging the novel by the laws of the drama. 

But as an ordinary rule, it may be observed that, since 
both in the novel and the play human life is represented by 



318 ON ART IN FICTION. 

an epitome, so in both it is desirable that all your charac- 
ters should more or less be brought to bear on the con- 
clusions you have in view. It is not necessary in the 
novel that they should bear on the physical events ; they 
may sometimes bear on the mental and interior changes in 
the minds and characters of the persons you introduce. 
For instance, if you design in the life of your hero to 
illustrate the Passion of jealousy upon a peculiar confor- 
mation of mind, you may introduce several characters and 
several incidents, which will serve to ripen his tendencies, 
but have not the least bearing on the actual cata- 
strophe in which those tendencies are confirmed into deeds. 
This is but fidelity to real life, in which it seldom happens 
that they who foster the passion are the witnesses or suf- 
ferers of the effects. This distinction between interior 
and external agencies will be made apparent by a close 
study of the admirable novel of "Zeluco." 

In the mechanism of external incidents, Scott is the 
greatest model that fiction possesses ; and if we select 
from his works that in which this mechanism is most 
artistical, we instance not one of his most brilliant and 
popular, but one in which he combined all the advantages 
of his multiform and matured experience in the craft : we 
mean the " Fair Maid of Perth." By noting well the 
manner in which, in this tale, the scene is ever varied at 
the right moment, and the exact medium preserved be- 
tween abruptness and longueur — how all the incidents are 
complicated, so as to appear inextricable, yet the solution 
obtained by the simplest and shortest process, the reader 
will learn more of the art of mechanical construction, than 
by all the rules that Aristotle himself, were he living, 
could lay down. 

Divisions of the Work. 

In the drama the Divisions of the plot in Acts are of in- 
finite service in condensing and simplifying the design of 
the author. The novelist will find it convenient to himself 
to establish analogous divisions in the conduct of his story. 
The division into volumes is but the affair of the printer, 
and affords little help to the intellectual purposes of the 
author, Hence most of our greatest novelists have had 



ON ART IN FICTION. 319 

recourse to the more definite sab-partition of the work into 
Boohs; audit the student use this mode of division, not 
from capricious or arbitrary pleasure, but with the same 
purposes of art for which, in the drama, recourse is had to 
the division into Acts, he will find it of the greatest ser- 
vice. Properly speaking, each Book should be complete in 
itself, working out the exact and whole purpose that the 
author meditates in that portion of his work. It is clear, 
therefore, that the number of his Books will vary accord- 
ing to the nature of his design. Where you have shaped 
your story after a dramatic fashion you will often be sur- 
prised to find how greatly you serve to keep your con- 
struction faithful to your design, by the mere arrangement 
of the work into the same number of sub- divisions as 
are adopted in the drama, viz., five books instead of five 
acts. Where, on the other hand, you avoid the dramatic 
construction, and lead the reader through great varieties 
of life and action, meaning in each portion of the history 
of your hero to illustrate separate views of society or 
human nature, you will probably find a much greater 
number of sub-divisions requisite. This must depend 
upon your design. Another advantage in these divisions 
consists in the rules that your own common sense will 
suggest to you with respect to the introduction of charac- 
ters. It is seldom advisable to admit any new Characters 
of importance after the interest has arrived at a certain 
point of maturity. As you would not introduce a new 
character of consequence to the catastrophe, in the fifth 
act of a play, so with more qualification and reserve it will 
be inartistical to make a similar introduction in the cor- 
responding portion of a novel. The most illustrious ex- 
ception to this general rule is in " Clarissa," in which the 
Avenger, the brother of the heroine, and the executioner 
of Lovelace, only appears at the close of the story, and for 
the single purpose of revenge ; and here the effect is 
heightened by the lateness and suddenness of the intro- 
duction of the very person to whom the catastrophe is 
confided. 



350 OK AET IN FICTION. 



The Catastrophe. 

The distinction between the novel and the drama is 
usually very visible in the Catastrophe. The stage effect 
of bringing up all the characters together in the closing 
chapter, to be married or stabbed, as the thing may require, 
is to a fine taste eminently displeasing in a novel. It in- 
troduces into the very place where we most desire verisimi- 
litude, a clap-trap and theatrical effect. For it must be 
always remembered, that in prose fiction we require more 
of the Real than we do in the drama (which belongs of 
right to the regions of pure poetry), and if the very last 
effect bequeathed to us be that of palpable delusion and 
trick, the charm of the whole work is greatly impaired. 
Some of Scott's romances may be justly charged with this 
defect. 

Usually the author is so far aware of the inartist-like 
effect of a final grouping of all the characters before the 
fall of the curtain, that he brings but few of the agents he 
has employed to be present at the catastrophe, and follows 
what may be called the wind-up of the main interest by 
one or more epilogical chapters, in which we are told how 
Sir Thomas married and settled in his country seat, how 
Miss Lucy died an old maid, and how the miser Grub was 
found dead on his money- chest ; disposing, in a few sen- 
tences, of the lives and deaths of all to whom we have 
been presented — a custom that we think might now give 
place to less hacknied inventions. 

The drama will bear but one catastrophe ; the novel will 
admit of more. Thus, in "Ivanhoe," the more vehement 
and apparent catastrophe is the death of Bois Gruilbert ; 
but the marriage of Ivanhoe, the visit of Rebecca to 
Rowena, and the solemn and touching farewell of the 
Jewess, constitute, properly speaking, a catastrophe, no 
less capital in itself, and no less essential to the completion 
of the incidents. So also there is often a moral cata- 
strophe, as well as a physical one, sometimes identified each 
with the other, sometimes distinct. If you have been 
desirous to work out some conception of a principle or a 
truth, the design may not be completed till after the more 
violent effects which form the physical catastrophe. In 



ON ART IN FICTION. 351 

the recent novel of " Alice, or the Mysteries," the external 
catastrophe is in the vengeance of Csesarini and the death 
of Vargravc, but the complete denouement aud com- 
pletion of the more typical meanings, and ethical results 
of the fiction, are reserved to the* moment when Maltravers 
recognises the Natural to be the true Ideal, and is brought, 
by faith and beauty of simple goodness, to affection and 
respect for mankind itself. In the drama it would be 
necessary to incorporate in one scene all the crowning 
results of the preceding events. We could not bear a new 
interest after the death of Bois Guilbert ; and a new act of 
mere dialogue between Alice and Maltravers, after the 
death of Yargrave would be insufferably tame and frigid. 
The perfection of a catastrope is not so much in the power 
with which it is told, as in the feeling of completeness 
which it should leave on the mind. On closing the work 
we ought to feel that we have read a whole — that there is 
a harmonious unity in all its parts — that its close, whether 
it be pleasiug or painful, is that which is essentially appro- 
priate to all that has gone before : and not only the mere 
isolated thoughts in the work, but the unity of the work 
itself, ought to leave its single and deep impression on the 
mind. The book itself should be a thought. There is 
another distinction between the catastrophe of a novel and 
that of a play. In the last it ought to be the most per- 
manent and striking events that lead to the catastrophe, 
in the former it will often be highly artistical to revive for 
the consummating effect many slight details — incidents the 
author had but dimly shadowed out — mysteries that you 
had judged till then, he had forgotten to clear up, and to 
bring a thousand rivulets, that had seemed merely intro- 
duced to relieve or adorn the way into the rapid gulf 
which closes over all. The effect of this has a charm not 
derived from mere trick, but from its fidelity to the 
natural and life-like order of events. What more common 
in the actual world than that the great crises of our fate 
are influenced and coloured, not so much by the incidents 
and persons we have deemed most important, but by many 
things of remote date, or of seeming insignificance. The 
feather the eagle carelessly sheds by the wayside plumes 
the shaft that transfixes him. In this management and 
combination of incidents towards the grand end, knowledge 



352 ON ART IN FICTION. 

of Human Nature can alone lead the student to the know- 
ledge of Ideal Art. 

These remarks form the summary of the hints and sug- 
gestion that, after a careful study of books, we submit to 
the consideration of the student in a class of literature 
now so widely cultivated and hitherto almost wholly un- 
examined by the critic. We presume not to say that they 
form an entire code of laws for the art. Even Aristotle's 
immortal treatise on Poetry, were it bequeathed to us com- 
plete, would still be but a skeleton ; and though no poet 
could read that treatise without advantage, the most 
glorious poetry might be, and has been written in defiance 
of nearly all its laws. Genius will arrive at fame by the 
light of its own star ; but Criticism, will often serve as a 
sign-post to save many an unnecessary winding, and in- 
dicate many a short way. He who aspires to excel in that 
fiction which is the glass of truth may learn much from 
books and rules, from the lecturer and the critic ; but he 
must be also the Imaginer, the Observer. He will be ever 
examining human life in its most catholic and comprehen- 
sive aspects. Nor is it enough to observe, — it is necessary 
to feel. We must let the heart be a student as well as the 
head. No man w r ho is a passionless and cold spectator, 
will ever be an accurate analyst, of all the motives and 
springs of action. Perhaps if we were to search for the 
true secret of Creative Genius, we should find that secret 
in the intenscness of its Sympathies. 



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